Ace net detective - internet sleuth finds stolen laptop
Ace net detective - internet sleuth finds stolen laptop
IT started with a night watching TV on his fiancee's computer and ended in a thief being caught.
Darren Franklin turned do-it-yourself detective after his partner's laptop - which had been stolen seven months earlier - popped up on his MobileMe online services account.
"We were about to watch a TV show on [partner] Jade's laptop when she asked me what 'PB12' was in the sidebar of her Finder window," Mr Franklin said.
Mr Franklin said he navigated to the old PowerBook - which had been stolen on December 20, 2008 along with his snowboard - and it brought up Jade's old files and everything the new owner had downloaded.
Mr Franklin downloaded every new file that had been saved on the stolen laptop and then set about trying to find its IP address - the computer fingerprint which would show exactly where the machine was being used.
An online network monitoring application called Little Snitch quickly tracked down the laptop's IP address.
An online network monitoring application called Little Snitch quickly tracked down the laptop's IP address.
The next day, July 2, Mr Franklin went to the police armed with a USB full of information.
On September 14 Mr Franklin had a breakthrough when the person using the laptop downloaded a phone bill with their name, phone number and street address.
Victorian police were able to execute a search warrant thanks to Mr Franklin's detective work.
Detectives later told the cyber sleuth that a person known to police had given the laptop to the person he had tracked down as a birthday gift.
Last week, 22 months after Mr Franklin's home was robbed and just a week before the couple's wedding, police returned the pair's laptop and his snowboard.