Stolen Computer Spies On Thief
SAN FRANCISCO (WCCO) -- A computer thief probably thought he got away with the crime, but what he didn't know was that the computer was keeping an eye on him.
When the California thief stole Joshua Kaufman's MacBook laptop, Kaufman was able to track the thief's every move.
He had installed a spy app on the computer, which secretly snapped photos of the thief.
Kaufman then set up a blog called "This Guy Has My Macbook" and posted those pictures for all to see. He also set up a Twitter account connected with the blog.
He got 400,000 page views, 26,000 tweets, 40,000 "likes," and he gained 5,000 more Twitter followers.
"I think people were surprised and amazed that software like this existed. A lot of people don't know that it's out there and available," said Kaufman. "A lot of people were entertained by the photos, thought it was funny. A lot of people were just cheering me on. They wanted some action to happen. They wanted the police to do something about it."
Police used his information to close in on the culprit and get Kaufman's computer back.
Kaufman said he could have gone to the guy's house or business, but probably wouldn't have gotten his computer back. He said stayed low and let the spy software do its thing.
