This is a rather amusing story of Kait Duplaga and her adventure to recover her stolen laptop.
From Seattle Times Newspaper:
Never underestimate the tenacity of a 19-year-old. When Kait Duplaga of White Plains, N.Y., had her laptop stolen — along with electronics she and her roommates owned — she didn’t despair. She cleverly used a built-in piece of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) technology to catch the alleged thieves.
Duplaga, an Apple Store employee, had turned on Back to My Mac on her computer. This Leopard feature allows remote access to a computer when the right network conditions are met. A few days after her computer was stolen, a friend of Duplaga’s spotted her in iChat, and sent her a text message by cellphone congratulating her on the computer’s return.
The machine’s current possessor wasn’t aware that Duplaga stayed logged in to iChat, and so she showed up there.
She logged in to .Mac on another computer (via the .Mac system preference pane), and used the built-in screen sharing to access her purloined laptop. Screen sharing provides both a view of the remote screen as well as control of the keyboard and mouse.
For the full story read on.
