Hacker News Reader

Comment by Periodic | Hacker News Reader

I wondered about this as well. If I were professionally stealing laptops, my first instinct would be to disconnect power/battery, then boot from CD and image the HDD for later identity theft. From there a reinstall would be in order. All the theives seem to just open it up and start using it.

I also password protect my laptop. I wonder if I shouldn't to encourage immediate use for information gathering.

View on HN

All there theives seem to just open it up and start using it.

Every missing/recovered laptop story I've ever seen on HN has a screenshot of the thief on Facebook. I imagine there is some degree of selection bias. The story about the recovered laptop (with pictures of the thief) is much more interesting than the one about the laptop that disappeared forever. Plus, it's much easier to catch a thief when you have access to their Facebook profile. Still, it's funny to think about all these thieves running off with laptops just so they can get their Facebook fix.

Your education and intellect are not typical of the thieving crowd.

if they were smarter, they certainly would not end as thiefs ;-)

Not necessarily, but maybe if they were smarter, they wouldn't be caught thieving :)

I certainly wasn't!

Oh...

If I found a laptop I would:

1. PC... pop out the BIOS battery to clear the BIOS password, re-flash the BIOS, DoD wipe the harddrive and install Windows fresh.

2. Mac... pop out the battery, wipe the PRAM, DoD wipe the harddrive and install OSX fresh.

'twas a joke bro. If I found a laptop, I'd do everything in my power to return it to its owner.

I miss the old firmware PowerMacs. You could reprogram the firmware to lock the boot sequence with a password. Unlike BIOS the firmware was NVRAM so popping the battery and resetting the PRAM wouldn't change much. The only way to get past the firmware was to replace the motherboard.

Have you seen the movie with the subtitle "the smartest guys in the room"?

I'm not sure I agree with you. Maybe they wouldn't be stealing laptops but instead be defrauding an entire state...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com