Most of the time, when something is lost or stolen, it may take awhile to find it or we may never get it back. Using our own technology, (cameras, computers, phones, etc), we are now able to track the criminals who may have stolen it in the first place.
There is an actual product that is available to actually help called Gadget Trak, which tracks any computer, phone, etc that has been stolen. On Macs it uses the web camera, and on PCs it uses a tracking device to find its location. But there are other ways to find your stolen belongings without purchasing this product.
One instance is of a woman who had her
camera , which was equipped with Eye-Fi, lost and stolen. Eye-Fi
is a memory card that uses a wireless network to upload photos automatically to your computer or a photo-sharing website. Because of Eye-Fi, her pictures and the pictures of the thieves were automatically updated to her computer from the thieves passing through an unsecured familiar network. She was then able to identify them to the police, and got her camera back.
Another case includes another woman whose Mac laptop was stolen from her home that used the “Back to My Mac” option to access her computer. Once she accessed her computer, she was able to see the thieves using her web camera and then was able to identify the thieves for the police.
Now I am sure that the company of Eye-Fi or Mac did not expect that their products would be used for the greater good of savvy technology users. The fact of the matter is that technology has become so ubiquitous in our lives that we now have to use it for everything.
If these products were not available, who knows if they would have gotten their belongings back? Crime isn’t solved like it is on television or in movies, so we can’t expect that CSI is going to find our missing laptop. One could only hope that we learn how technology can help us, and improve on it to help solve even more serious crimes. We eat, sleep and breathe technology, so why not solve crime with it too?
