How Dropbox Found My Stolen Laptop

Are memes still cool?  Anyway, thought this guy would fit.

I was away at a conference when I got the call from my wife.  It was about 6pm, and my wife and 6-month-old son had just gotten back from a 2-hour play date.  Our apartment door was hanging off its hinges, and our electronics, including my wife’s MacBook, were gone.

Being the average Americans we are, we hadn’t written down any serial numbers.  Being the average 20-somethings we are, we had our lives on our laptops, including all our son’s baby pictures other than the handful we’d put online (and unlike most parents you may know on Facebook, that wasn’t a whole ton). There were no fingerprints, no witnesses, and no leads.  Basically, there was no hope, and the police weren’t bashful about saying it.  If only, we lamented, we had installed some kind of tracking software on the laptop! We had renter’s insurance for our stuff, but it wouldn’t replace the pictures or the frustrating lack of justice.

After the painful process of hunting down serial numbers and filing police and insurance reports, we turned to sanitizing our digital lives.  Her laptop auto-signed her in to just about everything, so e-mail and website passwords had to go.  She had Dropbox installed, so we figured we’d clear out the files and deauthorize her old laptop (though I did toy with the idea of planting some honeypot-esque security program in it for a while.  If only I had more free time!)  We got on my computer, Chromed over to dropbox.com, and headed to Dropbox’s security settings.  By now, it was about 4 days post-theft.  Sure enough there in the list of devices was “White MacBook”, most recent activity… 3 hours ago?!  Her laptop was still signed in!

Now, in case you didn’t know this yet, here’s a tip: Dropbox not only tracks the devices that have accessed your account, but shows you the IP address they accessed it from.  Not only had our thief not wiped the hard drive, he/she hadn’t bothered to turn off Dropbox.  (I suppose if they were tech-savvy sorts they probably wouldn’t spend their afternoons bashing in apartment doors). Dropbox was now our secret laptop-tracking software.

A few minutes on Google told me the IP was a local address held by Time Warner Cable.  I called them and asked if they could link their IP addresses to street addresses, and they said they could, at least for a police officer with a subpoena.  Fortunately, I had watched enough Law and Order to know what that was, so I hung up and called the police.  The first guy I talked to didn’t sound too enthused, but we wrote it all down nonetheless.  Then we waited.

Monday we got a call from a detective who sounded a bit more tech-savvy; he had asked to be assigned to our case.  By this time, the IP address had changed, so we gave him both IP addresses and the number to call at Time Warner.  He called us again to say he’d filed the appropriate subpoenas.  Then we waited.

About a week later, our detective told us the subpoena had been served and he’d investigated the address.  It was some auto shop that “didn’t even have internet.” (How that makes any sense I don’t know.  It’d be like getting a call from a number and the phone company tracing it to a barn with no phone.  But hey, I’m no detective).   He was still waiting to hear about the other address, so we waited.  And waited.  And waited.  We checked Dropbox about once a week to make sure the IP address hadn’t changed, and we waited.  Finally, months after we’d given up, we got another call.  The subpoena for the second address had been served, and this time it was residential.  They got a search warrant, and told us they would be going in soon. 

Two days later, they had our laptop, some other gadgets, and an arrest.

A few signatures in a book downtown, and we were headed home with our stuff.  Our pictures and video on the laptop?  All still there.  Our insurance had already payed out and we had already replaced our stuff, so the recovered items are all headed to our insurer.  But not before we save the 10 months of pictures and video we just got back.

Now you might be thinking right now, ‘Wait, what if it was some poor college kid who bought the stuff on craigslist not knowing it was stolen? Poor kid…' Well, the guy had not just my wife’s laptop, but some of our other stuff as well, and more or less confessed to knowing it was stolen.  Given the cost of our stuff, that’s a felony offense of receiving stolen property.  On the other hand, he seems to be keeping quiet about who he bought it all from, so we’ll see where that investigation goes. The detective tells me he also had a very lengthy criminal record and a half-million dollar house, so you can save your sympathy.  Was this the guy who bashed in our door?  Maybe, or maybe not.  But whether we caught the burglar or just a partner in crime, it feels good to have a little justice in the morning.

Fix Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client and Mac Lion (10.7) and Mountain Lion (10.8) Connection Problems

After upgrading my Macbook Pro to Mountain Lion and setting it up, I noticed I suddenly couldn't connect to my school's VPN server.  This meant no online textbooks, journal articles, etc.  After searching far too many message boards, I finally found an answer.

I finally found the answer in a blog post from an Indian news site. Apparently, Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client and Apple's "Back to My Mac" feature don't play nice with each other, so fixing it requires turning off Back to My Mac if you have it set up.  Score one for Indian tech support!

To fix it, open System Preferences, click iCloud, and deselect Back to My Mac.  It's that easy!

Unfortunately, until Cisco and Apple work with one another it looks like an either/or situation with the two services.

DIY Doors on Coffee-Table TV Stand

 The completed project!  Opens and closes like a charm!!

Keep your electronics safe from infant hands, and give them one less shelf to bonk their head on!

Why?

This project had a simple motive: I had been using an Ikea coffee table with a few side tables as a DIY TVstand (see previous post).  This was going great until my 7-month-old son finally figured out how to pull himself up high enough to reach the electronics underneath.  Long story short, I needed a TV stand with some kind of doors in front. 

Solution 1: Buy a new TV stand with doors in front.

Boring, surprisingly expensive, and my furniture-buying budget is approximately nothing, so on to…

Solution 2: Install my own door!

Parts

3 – 3” Utility/DoorHinges (about $1.50 each, comes with screws but they were a bit long and would have stuck out the back.  You would be fine using just 2 hinges)

6 – Shorter screws.  I don't remember the diameter, but they need to fit the hinge holes and not be longer than about 3/4" or they'll stick out the back of the shelf.

1 – 10” x 36” BlackShelf ($7) for the door.

1 – Babyproofing Drawer Latch ($1, this style)

Total: $12

Instructions

More pictures are included below for clarification.

1) Cut the shelf down to 10” by 31-1/8”

2) Attach the hinges to the door.  Be very careful that they are on straight and that you’re on the correct side of the hinge.  For the hinge to open out, the shelf needs to be attached on the inside of the hinge so it can be flush with the front of the coffee table but not hit the top when it swings out.  Before you screw anything in, hold up the shelf and hinges and move it through the full range of motion to make sure you’re right!  Also, being so close to the edge of the shelf you should really drill pilot holes before you put in the screws.

3) Screw the hinges to the underside of the topmost piece of wood of the coffee table.  Make sure the hinge is recessed in a bit.  The front surface needs to be flush with no hinge edges, shelf corners, or anything else a falling toddler would hit their head on.  Your kids should at least stay as safe as your PS3.

4) Attach the base of the latch (not the hook part) to the underside of the bottom piece of wood in the TV stand.

5) Attach the hook part of the latch to the shelf/door.  It should be lined up so it closes easily but won’t slip open on its own.  I had to attach a thin piece of plywood between the shelf and the latch to make the latch reach the base.

6) If you want, tape off the wood and spray paint the front of the hinges.  My wife liked the metal look.

Note: One seeming problem here is that the sides of the coffee table are still open for little fingers to enter.  In our case, both sides face side tables with blankets under them, so it hasn't been a problem.  You could use mesh, more wood, etc. to permanently wall off the sides if you need to, as you shouldn't need to open and close them.  

Steps 2–3: Attach the hinges and door

Step 4: Attach the latch

So much space for things!