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Comment by d2viant | Hacker News Reader

The FBI will not be any help at all. Their backlog of cases is completely unworkable. Based on interactions with them from previous work I've done, there has to be monetary loss. The (unofficial) threshold to get them to investigate a crime involving monetary loss is at least $100,000 I believe. These guys are chasing criminals stealing millions, they won't be bothered with somebody who's laptop got stolen from his car.

His best bet is local law enforcement, but even this is likely a waste of time. What can they possibly do? They have a better chance of solving the crime from physical evidence than they do from electronic evidence.

He should file a police report for insurance purposes. Then just learn his lesson and move on.

Some thoughts for next time:

- Encrypt your hard-drive, especially on laptops or other portable devices. Check out http://www.truecrypt.org/

- Install a program to monitor/track your machine. Check out http://preyproject.com/

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"... His best bet is local law enforcement, but even this is likely a waste of time. What can they possibly do? ..."

Disagree.

The law has a long memory and criminals are stupid. Better to get a record of the events logged. Some time in the future this person/persons will try it again and a pattern emerge. In some ways, stealing laptops is like stealing cars in the past. Instead of a get-away car, the criminal now has a get-away computer with someone else's fingerprints on it.

If the email was sent from a Yahoo/Google/Microsoft email account, it's IP was logged, meaning if the person was using their home internet, you can get a trace to their house with a warrant.

If the email was sent from a private domain, they're traceable in many more ways.

It might be a wasted effort, but you should still try. If the police don't want to give you the time, bring your lawyer in with you... they'll have the time then.

Might I point out that if this has happened to other users in the same neighbourhood, the cops will become aware of the emerging pattern. If the thief and his fence start repeating their behaviour, the cops will gather more data and evidence by which they can track down, apprehend and incriminate the culprits.

So the OP ought to report it. This might be the first instance they hear of, or the third, or the eighteenth. But if it fits the pattern, that's one more piece of the puzzle that can bring the day when the thieves get their collars felt by the Law that much closer.

http://preyproject.com/ looks awesome!

Can't believe it's free. Haven't looked at these for a while, but from what I remember they were one step above a command line tool last time I checked. Prey looks great.

I've gotten the recommendation to encrypt my laptop drive already from a few people, so I've been considering whether I should do that or not. My worry now is that if my drive is encrypted, then isn't it much more easy to corrupt the drive? Also I suppose there is some chance, probably as high as getting my laptop stolen, that I would forget my own password and lose access to my own data that way.

If you are on a Mac (like the OP), you might consider using FileVault. Then, use a very secure master password, write it down and keep it somewhere very, very, very safe.

In the event you ever forget your password, you can unlock the encrypted volume with the master password.

I don't know if Truecrypt has a system like this now; they didn't when I last used them (about...what...5 years ago? O.o ).

If this person bought it in person from the thief, then the cops can get him to identify the thief. If it's ebay, then this person can tell you the account username. Maybe they'll uncover something big, like an underground ring of thieves.

I was thinking the same thing. Take the emailer up on his offer to back up whatever data you need, then offer to cut him deal - him the laptop + reward money + amnesty/immunity if he tells you who the thief was.

The monetary loss used to be $10,000.00 before they would lift a finger, but that was 10 years ago.

I find it kind of ridiculous that losses would need to exceed even $10,000 to be investigated. There's something wrong when a huge portion of our tax dollars goes into investigating, arresting and locking up non-violent offenders such as drug users and these cases involving theft are ignored.

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