Mac Thieves Traced via Back to My Mac (MobileMe)

Earlier this week, TUAW reported that some crooks broke into a house and fled with two Macs and a PC. The victim reportedly used his replacement MacBook Pro to screen-share with one of the stolen Macs, watching the crooks as they filled out an online form to find a job, thus displaying an address, the social security number and the phone number. There's more.

The victim, simply called Jim (not his real name), used MobileMe’s Back to My Mac feature that made it possible to automatically connect to other computers over the Internet. Basically, once the user has signed into MobileMe on their computer and BTMM is enabled, they may securely reach other computers via the Internet, provided that the other computer(s) are signed into the same MobileMe account, under Mac OS X 10.5, with Back to My Mac enabled. It was the case with Jim's computers.

Recently, the victim contacted TUAW with new information for the “World's dumbest crooks” saga. He said he had connected again to his laptop but, this time around, no one appeared to be home. However, an unfamiliar jpeg image on the desktop caught his eye. Sure enough, the alleged crook had taken a picture of himself with the Mac’s built-in iSight camera. Jim snatched it quickly and forwarded it to his local police department. He was also careful not to leave any tracks. For now, the final chapter of this story still has to be written.

Removing a computer from Back to My Mac is just as easy as grabbing a screenshot, or even taking a picture with the Mac’s iSight camera, but you have to know about the service in the first place. It’s comforting to hear that thieves are dumb, or unaware of services like Back to My Mac, but few are the cases where the criminal actually continues to use the stolen device for their personal benefits, without even reinstalling the system, or formatting the hard drive. It also takes quite the computer-savvy victim to catch thieves this way.