My laptop was stolen.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=83429

by cellis • 19 years ago

16 49 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

So, my $1k laptop was stolen with my project/startup code over the holiday (all backed up to shared host/gmail). After all was said (obscenities/what-I-would-do-if-I-caught-theif) and done, it was gone: stolen, I assume, from my jeep. What do you guys do to ensure that this doesn't happen, and if it does, what recourse do you have? I have no idea where it was stolen, (at work, parents house, or coffee/book shop).

I really, really wish I had thought about this and bought LoJack or insured it on my car insurance or something, but I didnt :(.

Anyone have similar horror stories?

mrtron• 19 years ago

I lost a pair of pants once, but it was worth it to leave rapidly.

Losing a laptop is never good, it is a reminder to us all to backup. The actual laptop isn't worth very much, but a laptop full of data seems priceless.

rms• 19 years ago

are you covered on your parent's homeowners insurance? You might be if you are a full time student.

amichail• 19 years ago

Anyone use an encrypted file system? Is there much of a performance penalty?

nickb4• 19 years ago

I use Filevault. Never had ANY issues with it so far. My password is also pretty strong (10 alphanumeric characters with punctuation sprinkled) so I doubt anyone would get much out of trying to crack it.

Everyone who travels with their laptop should use some kind of an encrypted FS if their data is worth anything.

cratuki2• 19 years ago

> Never had ANY issues with it so far.

It requires far more HDD space than not using it because it doesn't seem to clean up after itself for a while. And if you get low on hard disk space your system grinds to a halt.

imsteve4• 19 years ago

Performance isn't the problem. If any of your drives ever corrupt a single bit then all of your data is trashed (with most setups) and that's a big problem.

BitGeek3• 19 years ago

This is no the case with filevault, when it is set up with a login account. I have lost encrypted disk images under OS X due to drive problems... but have had a filevault make it thru a failing disk without trouble.

It helps that the Mac has HFS+ and Journaling.

kogir• 19 years ago

I'm using Bitlocker + EFS on Vista and have noticed no performance problems at all.

carpal• 19 years ago

If it was stolen from your car, you might be able to get your car insurance to pay for it. But you might have to file a police report.

mattmaroon2• 19 years ago

Actually, I'm almost 100% sure you can after filing the report. I'm not sure you want to though.

mwerty• 19 years ago

Also, renter's insurance will probably cover it.

dcurtis3• 19 years ago

Yeah, and then your car insurance will go up. Not really worth it.

edw5192• 19 years ago

Really stupid question:

Why ever even move your startup laptop? I have never done this. I work on my startup from home 95% of the time. The other 5% I edit check program listings. Startup laptop backed up and secure at all times. Am I the only one?

immad• 19 years ago

You might want to use the mobile component of the laptop at times. Like in a cafe for example, or perhaps if you were to attend a conference or maybe on a long train ride.

Am i missing the sense of your first question?

imsteve4• 19 years ago

Why would you ever get a laptop instead of getting a much better bang for the buck desktop if you're never going to move it?

axod• 19 years ago

Try using a desktop whilst sat on the toilet. Or am I the only one...?

edw5192• 19 years ago

I didn't say I was never going to move it. I said I never did. But I can if I want to. A few hundred bucks to be able to do that is worth it. And even then, it would never leave my side.

inovica• 19 years ago

You are right, seems a really stupid question :P Laptops are purchased for their portability in general - means you can code from anywhere.

inklesspen• 19 years ago

I use Orbicule's Undercover service, which is much like LoJack, only specifically tailored to Macs.

I also back up to an external drive nearly every night (Thanks, Time Machine!), and check my code into source control (SVN or Mercurial) on my VPS.

paul• 19 years ago

$ crontab -e

 */3 * * * *    curl -m 5 http://myserver.com/ping.txt > /dev/null 2>&1

Maybe I'll get their IP address at least.

qaexl• 19 years ago

Hey, good idea ... I'm going to do that.

nickb4• 19 years ago

That's ok if you don't have a password on your account or you don't require a password to wake up from sleep. That's too dangerous so I recommend the following:

Set your Mac to use Filevault and go to Security section and select "Require password after waking up from sleep" so if someone opens up your laptop, they'll be greeted with a login screen. Now you want them to reboot...

What I did to make a 'honey pot' is this: I created a guest account (named it 'Krista') and that account doesn't require a password so if someone steals my laptop and reboots it, they'll be able to use this account. The account itself is locked down with very little permissions. I allow the use of a browser and the browser launches immediately after login (add it to Login items). The home page of the browser is set to my server's redirect page that uses meta refresh to immediately take the user to Yahoo. But I do get their IP. I also have curl set to ping a page every 20 min or so.

You could pay some cash for Orbicule (they use your iSight to grab pics of a person sitting in front of the screen) etc but this method is more than good enough. A step-up would be to proxy all of the requests from the browser through the proxy you control... but I haven't found a nice proxy to install on a shared server.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any method that would survive a reinstall of OS X but most thieves don't know how to do that anyway.

imsteve4• 19 years ago

The cron daemon should be launched at a runlevel preceding anything windowing related, this is the default in all linux distros. So you shouldn't have to log to anything for it to be running.

Also, if you have sshd running, which decent OS will have, then you can automatically take over the computer remotely.

I'm sure this is easily applicable to OSX.

staunch• 19 years ago

If you saw those requests from a bad guy you'd be wishing you could change it to:

    curl https://myserver.com/runme.sh 2>/dev/null|/bin/bash

tx2• 19 years ago

There are about 3 or 4 companies who built products they sell for Windows that do exactly that: install a background service that keeps pinging their servers.

Some courts had said that Microsoft was killing the competition by bundling "free" stuff into Windows. To me it looks the other way - their weak OS only gives people chance to make money by compensating for its deficits.

mohamed_rafique• 19 years ago

122.164.125.114

noonespecial• 19 years ago

Check ebay for the next week or so. You might be able to buy it back!

icky• 19 years ago

> You might be able to buy it back!

Or just report to ebay and the police that it was stolen, and get it back.

chengmi• 19 years ago

1) A car is for transportation, not storage. 2) Laptops, like children, should never be left unattended. 3) No one needs insurance until they need it. 4) Finish your code, make money, and buy a new laptop.

davidw2• 19 years ago

Yeah, I'm super paranoid when I'm out and about with my laptop. I do not leave it unattended.

dcurtis3• 19 years ago

I rarely leave my laptop unattended, but I once melted it. Honey mustard potato chips, it appears, are EXTREMELY flammable.

The point is, just because you keep it with you, doesn't mean you don't need insurance.

mattmaroon2• 19 years ago

I def recommend using PGP full disk encryption for Windows if you have sensitive data on the laptop.

cratuki2• 19 years ago

Is there some sort of free software filesystem where you basically automatically sync it with a silo somewhere remote? I've got a new clean hosted instance, and was thinking it would be neat to be able to use mercurial for source control on my laptop, and know that it was constantly duplicated on my leased hosting.

Any advice?

pi3832• 19 years ago

Sell the Jeep and buy a car with a real trunk. As a bonus it will probably get 2x the gas mileage, and oil changes and tires will cost 1/2. Not to mention insurance.

DanielBMarkham• 19 years ago

My laptop is like my alternate brain, so I usually get a more expensive model with all of the insurance and on-site stuff. Sure -- it's probably paying way too much for the value I receive, but in my opinion it's a better investment than a car. After all, a car only takes me places. A laptop expands my reach.

And no -- don't sell the Jeep! Just stop leaving your laptop in it unattended.

tx2• 19 years ago

You had your backups. So what is the problem? Where is the "horror" part?

cellis• 19 years ago

Sorry, I'm poor, so I consider $1000 to be a horrific loss. :(

snorkel• 19 years ago

95% of laptop thieves are not computer saavy. Rest assured they are not examining your hard drive for sensistive data or reading your email, data theft is too sophisticated for laptop thiefs and takes valuable time that could be spent smoking crack, but needless to say changing your online passwords is first order of business. If your laptop was a windows PC then the thief traded it for pot to a cousin who is currently installing pirated games on it. If the laptop was running anything other than windows then the hard drive has been reformatted. If it was a Mac laptop then it was traded to a fence for cash who reformatted it then put it on ebay.

Fortunately laptops are getting cheaper. The best policy is buy a cheap laptop and assume it will be lost, stolen, or broken. Treat it as disposable.

ochiba• 19 years ago

That was hillarious, you really had me cracking up there

tlrobinson2• 19 years ago

I don't leave my laptop in my car...

tlrobinson2• 19 years ago

I'm just waiting for my laptop to break / get stolen, it would give me a great excuse to buy a new one...

(it's a 1.33GHz PowerBook...)

My laptop was stolen.

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