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looksideways

Perth boy now in Singapore.

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September 23rd, 3:45am 1 comment

The day I believed my Macbook had been stolen

Macwithblkscreenangrynew
Two days ago, I had a big scare. Nothing really bad happened, thank god. It's not like I lost a finger or severed an arm or heard that a friend of mine got hit by a car. Really, it's more of a #firstworldproblem. I was scared that my laptop had been stolen. It wasn't actually stolen, but as far as I was concerned, I had convinced myself that it was. Ultimately, it was a reminder of how carelessness can eventually cause huge headaches.

Now I tend to be pretty pedantic when it comes to minding my personal possessions. I blame this on my Mum, who once as a (very proud) single traveller, ensured that we take as much care guarding our personal possessions as she once did. This means I have habits now like 'idiot checks', when you scour an public area before you leave for any dropped items, and wrapping my bag strap around my leg when sitting on a plane or train. It's very useful though, as I haven't had any major cases of lost phones or cameras. This time however, I let my bag out of my sight, and things went badly. 

The story is rather simple. I had been asked to help out performing at SMU's ICON Peace Ceremony. It is a yearly campus-wide event that celebrates the international diversity of SMU's students, where we walk holding flags and celebrate the peace we have here in Singapore. I had been asked to play not only the Australian flag-wielding patriot, but also the piano for Gloria and Charles, who were singing Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion's 'The Prayer'. I stashed my satchel bag in the back corner of a secured meeting room within the Office of Student Life. The staff assured me it was a safe area. I had my MacBook Air in that bag, so I had hoped it wouldn't go walking.

So we did practices from 10am through to the ceremony, and had lunch afterwards. It was about 2pm before I got back to the student office to pick up my bag. Evidently, I was a little later than the others, and all the remaining bags had been emptied from the secured room and placed next to the door in the Office. Inside the room, board staff members had gathered for a meeting. My bag was not outside. After communicating with a staff member inside the room with sign language, it was decided that my bag was not in the secured room either.

What a mess. I decided that I needed to check the inside of the room, however the meeting was still place and the room could not be entered until the meeting had closed, which was likely to be over an hour. I left my number with Jeremy, one of the OSL staff. He assured me that he would check himself when they finished. I headed back to the hostel with my wallet and water bottle.

About an hour later, I received a call from Jeremy - he said he had looked in the room and it was not there. He was very sorry, but promised to call back later if he had any more information. He talked about CCTV amongst other things. I was quite astonished - I had believed my laptop had been stolen.

Then, a barrage of questions stole my concentration. What was the last thing I was working on? What would be the first thing they see when they open the screen? Would I have to buy a new Macbook? How much do they cost? More importantly, where exactly was my laptop? Who was looking at it? What were they looking at? Were they keeping it for themselves, or would they sell it? I mellowed on the thought that somewhere in Singapore, my laptop existed. 

After I had straightened out my thoughts, I tried to establish exactly my emotional reaction to the situation. I opened up my big Macbook and went to my mail client, looking to see what would be seen by the new owner of my other Macbook. First mistake: I didn't have my master passwords set for when my laptops wake from sleep. My inbox was a hive of personal information. There were Facebook messages, my address, my name, PayPal sending me receipts. Every one of my accounts was open for the taking. 35,000 emails just there. And sure, it's not like I have any really personal pieces or thoughts in my email accounts or anything personally damaging, but they contained my life. No doubt they could access my Facebook, Twitter, Google accounts if they went online. And my DropBox syncs directly to the computer too. That's another case in itself.

What was the most painful thought was not the fact that these-would-be-thieves had a new laptop. Rather, it stressed me out that every facet of my life was stored, in some way, shape or form, on that laptop. I hoped that if it had been stolen, they would format the drive and be on with it. They can have a new laptop, fine, but I don't want them going through my stuff. And I'm sure that would be the first thing they did. Going through the con. The victim's possessions. Finding out who they were, and what they could salvage to make their theft even more profitable.

I realised I had invested a stupid amount of blind faith into my theft-protection scheme. Some things are just unavoidable. So if in this case I had lost my laptop, I would ensure that next time my laptop would be lost, they could do what they want with it, as long as they didn't have my life. That's all I wanted. I decided that if I didn't hear back from Jeremy with some better news in the next few hours, I would go through and change all my accounts. Even if they could read my life from that day backwards, I would not let them read what followed. I remember reading that Apple is rolling out Find my Mac with the iCloud. Alas, I don't have a developer account so I missed that boat. I continued feeling sorry for myself, and read some case studies on Macs that had been tracked and found with software like Undercover and the open-source Prey. If only I had installed something like this beforehand!!

Thankfully, I heard back from Jeremy within another hour. The news was that he had found my bag - it seems that I had put it in the furthest possible point of the room. It had my laptop in. I was hugely relieved.

Nevertheless, some lessons were learned on Wednesday. I have set master passwords on both my laptops, and a family licence of Undercover for up to five devices on one already. The other I will fix this afternoon.

Moral of the story: Don't take your computer privacy lightly. Keep master passwords set and don't take chances.

 

Filed under stolen Macbook SMU Tech
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