How I Got My Stolen Macbook Back Within 24 Hours

This blog post was originally published yesterday on Doug van Spronsen’s personal blog.

Last weekend, my briefcase was stolen out of our vehicle while it was parked outside of a Bed & Breakfast. In the bag was my Macbook and all of my documents for work. Apparently while I was moving all of our stuff into the house, someone grabbed the bag and ran before I came back.

Because nothing else was stolen or moved around, we didn’t even notice it was missing until the following morning. After searching around frantically, it was clear the bag was gone. Elyse suggested we file a police report, so we called the RCMP. (I was pretty sceptical of them finding anything, but we filed it anyway, which later turned out to be essential.)

Needless to say, I was pretty upset that everything was gone.

After driving for a while to our next destination thinking the laptop was long gone, I sort of remembered downloading a tracking program a while back after hearing about Sean Power recovering his laptop after it was stolen.

I logged in using on my iPhone, and reported the device as missing using the software  Prey. Unbelievably, within 10 minutes, I began getting emails sent to me that looked like the image below. (I blurred the images, as I am not sure about the legality of it all.)

Every 20 minutes, Prey would send me a photo of the guy who stole my laptop, his location, and a screenshot of the websites that we was looking at. The photos also gave a lot of clues about what the house looked like, which was important as well. 

We immediately called the police dispatch, and within a few hours of us reporting everything missing, I was able to give all of the information verbally over the phone to the policewoman. (As an aside, throughout the entire process, the police were 100% responsive and ready for action. The constable we were working with never even saw the data, she just went off of what I said. It was pretty impressive to see. I also found it humorous that they were completely mindboggled that you could track someone in this way)

Anyways, the police went to the location that Prey said the device was located, but the house was deserted and no one answered. Because they didn’t have a warrant, they were not able to enter the house.

The email updates had stopped coming, meaning the thief wasn’t using my laptop anymore, so we couldn’t track it. We resumed our vacation (wine tasting in Naramata, great for stress relief) and waited for the emails to start coming in again.

The next night, he started using the computer. Because he was logged into Facebook, I could see what his name was, his age, and his school through the screenshot. As you can see below, he was even bragging to his friends about buying a 17” laptop for “$2250” and saying that he “bought it”

Getting his name was key, because the police were then able to get the full address of where he lived, and closed in fast. Turned out Prey had the location a bit wrong, so getting his name was key. At this point, the police felt that they had enough information to confront the thieves, and made their move.

It was pretty funny to witness, because after I hung up with the police as they were about to make their move, I received this screenshot.

Note how no one was there anymore? Thats because the police were questioning him.

Both kids made a full confession immediately, and brought up everything that they nabbed. Amazingly, they had got a lot more than I originally thought. In addition to my laptop, I forgot that my camera and iPod were in the bag (yikes) and our GPS unit as well, but they returned everything.

I made the drive back to Kelowna and recovered everything from the policewoman. I was pretty amazed. Everything was in great condition and running fine.

So a big thanks to the Kelowna RCMP and to Prey, which I highly recommend downloading. It is free to use and, as you can tell, works pretty well.