A photographer, John Heller, had $9,000 worth of gear stolen at a shoot in Hollywood. After giving up all hope of ever getting his Nikon D3 back, he checked with a site called GadgetTrak that scans Flickr and other image upload sites for photos matching the serial number of his DSLR.

In a few seconds he had found shots with serial numbers matching his D3 belonging to a professional photographer. With the help of the police he got his gear back and now the tracking service is a recommend site for LAPD detectives on the hunt for fugitive cameras.

Want to give it a try? You can search the service for free. It currently holds 10 million serial numbers and it checks sites like 500px.com and Flickr for recent shots. Also note that you should probably write down your camera’s serial number ASAP for this to work correctly at all.

A lot of these posts are a bit self serving but it’s great to see folks reunited with their gadgets so often these days (this tale of a stolen laptop is particularly stirring) that it makes me wonder why anyone tries to gank anything electronic anymore.

In what could amount to a very hefty haul, Moscow thieves took a sledge to metal security shutters and then a glass case to grab twenty items including a Leica Pro Set with three lenses. Interestingly, they left a $32,000 Leica S2 on the shelf and, not surprisingly, focused mainly on lenses and the familiar standard M9s.

Serial numbers are after the jump if you ever spot these in the wild.

A translation from Leica Russia:

“Today, July 9 at 3:00 am, two masked men in scrap metal shutters kicked the glass door with a sledgehammer and broke into the shop Leica on Leninsky Prospekt. After breaking all the windows, they stole part of the technique, which was in the store. Thieves stayed for fifteen minutes.”

1. Objects Leica Elmar 18/3.8 ASPH., S / N 4084590 

2. Leica Pro Set c 3 lens (35 / 1.4, 70-180/2.8, 35-70/2.8) 
_Leica, S / N 2927341 
_Obektiv APO-Elmarit 70-180mm / f 2.8, S / N 03905538 
_Obektiv Vario-Elmarit 35-70mm / f 2.8, S / N 3419566 
_Obektiv Summilux 35mm / f 1.4 

3. Digital Camera Leica (color – black), S / N 3104330 

4. Digital Camera Leica (color – white), S / N 3111065 

5. Lens Leica Summicron R jm, 90mm / f 2.0, S / N 2463461 

6. Lens Leica Macro-Elmar M 90mm / f 4.0, S / N 3975976 

7. Lens APO-TELYT-M 135mm / f 3.4, S / N 3722933 

8. Leica, S / N 1748472 

9. Objects Leica Elmarit 21mm / f 2.8 for film cameras 

10. Objects Summilux 50mm / f 1.4 Titanium Edition (Pre-ASPH), S / N 3675659 

11. Objects Summicron 50mm / f 2.0, S / N 3706945 

12. Leica SF 20 flash 

13. Leica, S / N 3469118 

14. Lens Summicron 50mm / f 2.0, S / N 3997354 

15. Leica (color – white), S / N 3821473 

16. Leica (color – black), S / N 3983517 

17. Leica, 2 pcs., S / N 4149352, S / N 4141590 

18. Leica (color – black), 2 pcs., S / N 3922466, S / N 3913056 

19. Leica (color – black), S / N 3748336 

20. Leica (color – black), S / N 4201224

via DigitalJournalOfPhotography

[via HardOCP]

It was only a few days ago that I mentioned that, you know, your data is never secure. So, this story isn’t surprising at all. It turns out that the records of more than 3.3 million student loans were stolen a few days ago. Data stolen includes names, Social Security numbers, and credit card numbers. Awesome.

This time around, the theft wasn’t the result of phishing or other “hi-tech” method—nope, it was good ol’ fashioned physical theft.

The data was stored on a portable drive. Said drive was stolen.

The company implicated in this mess is Educational Credit Masters Corporation. Not sure if those guys handle my student loans—all my private ones go through Citibank—but if my data is stolen, great. I look forward to months, if not years, of trying to sort all that mess out. Or maybe I’ll just use it as an opportunity to escape to South America, to freedom.

So again, folks: your data is never, ever safe. Let’s not pretend any differently.

The parents took the children into the store, and then allowed them to walk around picking the movies that the wanted to watch, and then loaded them into the stroller. The couple then left the store without paying for the merchandise. Of course in the US, they would have been harassed and then let go, only to find that all the cases were filled with rocks. Police are currently looking for help in identifying the couple and the children.

Now this story comes to us from the NY Post, not one of the most tech savvy newspapers in our fair city. Also the thought that NYC detectives would “work with Microsoft” to track a stolen XBox is a bit hard to accept at face value, but apparently the story happened so kudos to Pelham Detective John Hynes and Microsoft for working together on this. At least a detective had a bit of fun learning about IP scanning.

We should also totes send the detective a new XBox. Anyone live in Pelham, Bronx?

Some Netflix news for you this morning. It looks like a 49-year-old post office worker is facing a maximum of five years in federal prison after having plead guilty to federal theft charges. What was he stealing? Oh, you know, some 3,000 Netflix DVDs over the years.

The man, one Myles Weathers, was nabbed after surveillance footage found him taking DVDs from the little sleeves. Netflix itself had become suspicious when it received an unusually high number of complaints saying, “Hey, we never got our DVD~! What’s up?”

Yup, that’s because Mr. Weathers was stealing them all at a Massachusetts distribution facility.

In the chat room, Scott came up with an idea, if you were to do such a scam: instead of stealing the DVDs and never returning them, why not steal ‘em, rip ‘em, then send them on their way? What are the odds that someone is going to notice an extra day in mail delivery time?

One more notch in Netflix streaming‘s belt, though.

$1 if you can figure out what DVD that is in the logo. (Note: Offer not valid on Planet Earth.)

Police found 371 items in the home of Douglas A. Parkes, Jr. along with $4200 in case and about 3,000 Best Buy Reward Zone certificates.

According to the article, “Best Buy staff noticed Parkes repeatedly bought popular items, including seven 37-inch LCD televisions and 37 iPods.”

Parkes had been working for the USPS since 1997 and has been put on administrative leave while awaiting sentencing.

Postal worker fesses up to scam using Best Buy rewards [Star Tribune]

Years ago, I read an article in 2600 describing a system that would track down your stolen laptop. Presumably it was all open source software, I can’t remember. GadgetTrak, which is a company that can track down your stolen gadgets, including Mac/PC, iPhone, BlackBerry, and WinMo phone, has a fun success story that’ll kill a few minutes.

An iMac was stolen in Brooklyn. Then the GadgetTrak software kicked in, taking a photo of the presumed thief and using Wi-Fi to pinpoint, to with a few meters. The police were then contacted, and paid a visit to the suspect’s place of business. There they found the stolen iMac, as well as two other stolen laptops.

Seems to be a pretty convincing proof of concept. Not that I’m going to buy MacTrak anytime soon, mind you.

Who knew? Apparently would-be thieves have a soft spot for baby photos. A research study conducted in Edinburgh found that lost wallets containing baby photos were returned nine out of ten times.

According to UK’s The Times:

Hundreds of wallets were planted on the streets of Edinburgh by psychologists last year. Perhaps surprisingly, nearly half of the 240 wallets were posted back. But there was a twist.

Richard Wiseman, a psychologist, and his team inserted one of four photographs behind a clear plastic window inside, showing either a smiling baby, a cute puppy, a happy family or a contented elderly couple. Some wallets had no image and some had charity papers inside.

When faced with the photograph of the baby people were far more likely to send the wallet back, the study found. In fact, only one in ten were hard-hearted enough not to do so. With no picture to tug at the emotions, just one in seven were sent back.

According to Dr Wiseman the result reflects a compassionate instinct towards vulnerable infants that people have evolved to ensure the survival of future generations. “The baby kicked off a caring feeling in people, which is not surprising from an evolutionary perspective,” he said.

This begs the question: If it works with wallets, will it also work for gadgets? Perhaps an adorable baby as the background on your cell phone and laptop might significantly up your chances of getting those devices back should they become lost or stolen.

And finally, some suggestions of photos to NOT have on your gadgets:

• You leaning against an Audi, eating lobster and wearing silver pants and a T-shirt that says “Enron-AIG Spring Fling 1998!”
• A stack of $100 bills with a caption that says “Plenty more where that came from — In my wallet, which is made from unicorn hair.”
• This photo

Want to keep your wallet? Carry a baby picture [Timesonline.co.uk via Consumerist]

Did you know that video game theft costs retailers billions of dollars a year? So says the Entertainment Merchant Association, a group that “advance[s] the interests of the $33 billion home entertainment industry.” That’s actual theft, mind you. Like, you walk into a store, swipe a game, put it under your shirt, then amscray. The solution to this problem? Not to lower the price of video games so that people don’t have to steal, no, but to install some sort of radio-activated lock. Said lock would make the games (or movies) unplayable until they’ve been unlocked at the cash register.

And this is where opinions begin to diverge. You could take the EMA’s side, and say that theft is a huge problem, and that the only way to solve the problem is to slap on this lock. The other side of the argument is, well, that sucks that you’re losing so much money and all, but I’m an Upstanding Citizen—why should I be subjected to this new locking procedure?

If all goes according to plan, the technology could go into effect in stores by the end of 2010.

My opinion, as if that matters: yet another reason to buy things online. I’d be willing to wait the two or three days it takes Amazon to ship Video Game. But that’s just me.

Flickr

While I’m sure it’s super fun to stuff your gaming console in your carry-on luggage so it doesn’t get stolen, it’s not all that practical. Yale University student Jesse Maiman found that out the hard way when his Xbox 360 disappeared from his checked luggage on a US Airways flight.

According to Cincinnati.com, Maiman’s Xbox 360 “had a specialized hard drive and components he said cost more than $1,000.”

When he retrieved his luggage, he noticed that his bag felt much lighter and, upon closer inspection, found that his console and peripherals had been stolen. Maiman reported the theft to a US Airways employee, which led to “an unconscionable runaround” that lasted for weeks, according to his lawsuit.

The suit calls for $1,700 to replace his Xbox plus at least $25,000 for “non-economic distress” – apparently the maximum amount allowed by law is a million bucks, so it could theoretically amount to far more than $25,000. Anyone who’s had to deal with an airline over lost or stolen luggage may argue that even a million dollars isn’t enough.

It appears that US Airways isn’t concerned, though, as a company spokesperson said the airline wasn’t aware of a lawsuit and, even so, the federal loss limit is $3,300 per piece of luggage. None of that will matter, however, as the spokesperson finished with, “Our publicly available baggage policies specifically exclude liability for electronics checked in luggage.”

So basically any electronics item you leave in your luggage is fair game to steal. Nice.

[via [H]Enthusiast]

I think this situation really highlights a fundamental flaw in the way computing technology works. The military uses all sorts of specialized gadgets, and yet they (and their contractors) rely on the same old Windows operating systems that you and I use. Businesses have been struggling for years with ways to keep corporate information secure. The current trend is whole disk encryption, whereby the entire contents of a hard drive are encrypted. If the drive is removed from the system, or the proper credentials not supplied at boot, the data on the drive remains inaccessible.

I’m sure the military is using stuff like whole disk encryption, and other techniques to protect the data stored on their laptops. But I wonder if consumer computing solutions can truly be effectively hardened for use in such hostile environments?

Via Defense Tech.

Ha! Remember when the Half-Life 2 source code was stolen a few years ago, showing up all over BitTorrent, IRC and the like? It turns out that Valve, once it was able to determine who was responsible (with the help of the FBI), a German fellow by the name of Axel Gembe, attempted to offer him a job! The company offered him the job in order to lure him to the U.S. so he could be arrested. Gembe, perhaps thinking that it was patently ludicrous that the company he just helped screw would want to emply him—you know, to make good use of his elite hacking skills—refused the job.

He was later arrested in Germany, where he doesn’t (didn’t? I’m getting lost in tense here!) face the threat of being sent to Guantanamo.

The moral of the story is, if you succeed in pulling off some major “hack,” don’t think your victim would be so willing to turn the other cheek as to offer you a job. You don’t want to end up on TV now, do you?

Or, as Boing Boing put it, the job is a lie.

Never mind that I’m willing to put a whole $5 on the fact that I read about this fake job offer in Edge magazine several months ago.

If someone asked me to help them steal a gigantic cactus, I’d be like, “Have you ever touched a cactus? Those things are really prickly. Find yourself another cohort, kind sir.” But apparently the giant Saguaro cactus, found mostly in Arizona, can sell for over $1,000 which, in turn, has given rise to a pretty active poaching trade.

In order to cut down on such thievery, officials at Arizona’s Saguaro National Park will test the effectiveness of implanting RFID microchips – similar to the ones that people implant in their pets – inside the types of cacti that are getting stolen most often. Park officials will then be able to wave a wand scanner over cacti found in truck beds and even local nurseries to detect whether or not a particular cactus has been stolen.

[via Jaunted]

There was an adorable article in Time magazine last week about Wi-Fi theft. The author, Lev Grossman, admits to being a “Wi-Fi thief” for several years, using his neighbors’ unsecured Wi-Fi without them knowing. He calls it a crime, a direct violation of Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47 of the United States Code.

But is that really theft?

TechDirt argues that when someone leaves an access point open, they are essentially granting permission to anyone to use it. And if you’ve granted permission, how can someone’s access be unauthorized and illegal? Cracking someone’s WEP (people still use WEP around here) and then using that connection, obviously, is a different story.

Bonus points if you have a swashbuckling “I stole teh Wi-Fi!1″ story to share. I tried to crack my neighbor’s WEP a few years ago, which means I was savvy enough to fire up Linux and run AirSnort. Hardcore hacking, in other words.

To quote Boing Boing’s Joel Johnson, “The most amazing gaming story of the year.”

A recently released adventure game for the PC, Limbo of the Lost, appears to have stolen content, including artwork and level design, from games like Oblivion and Silent Hill. The game, developed by Majestic Studios—its [down] Web site is hosted on Geocities!—looks like absolute rubbish, from concept to execution. Like, check out this video:

Really, dynamic storyline? Good heavens.

The discovery of alleged thievery was made by GamePlasma, with users of the NeoGAF—remember them?—have been finding more and more offending screenshots. Doesn’t this remind you of Silent Hill 4? It should!

How do you like that, a game ripping off others left and right. Pretty funny.

Majestic, if you’re going to make a terrible game, at least use your own imagination.

A couple from Long Island left their camera at a restaurant in Florida where two of the employees found and kept it . The camera contained an Eye-Fi card which automatically found an open wireless base station and began uploading their photos including some photos the thieves had taken of each other. When they contacted the restaurant with the evidence, the camera was returned and the couple declined to press charges, proving that even technologists have a heart.

I wonder how much this is going to affect petty theft. With everything enabled for Wi-Fi and cellular, how often will we get our pockets picked when the thieves have no idea how the device is rigged.

Get this. You know how when you have to confirm your bank account with, say, Paypal or Google Checkout or any number of online services that want to make sure the bank account that they’re going to be depositing money into belongs to you? So you’ll generally receive two small deposits — pennies each — that you’ll have to confirm, right? Well some guy used an automated script to open up around 58,000 accounts with E-Trade and Schwab.com and collected all the little deposits using a handful of bank accounts. When all was said and done, he walked away with around $50,000.

The man, Michael Largent of California, also used the technique to nab over $8,000 from Google Checkout. He said he needed the money to pay down some debts. He hasn’t been charged by Google (maybe because Google doesn’t “prohibit multiple e-mail addresses and accounts”) but he’s facing computer, wire, and mail fraud charges for the E-Trade and Schwab stunts. Largent is currently out on bail.

via Wired

Noah “Red Hot” Shachtman wrote a great piece on an iRobot insider who stole the plans for the company’s military Packbot robot and recreated the robot himself, becoming a direct competitor to iRobot. The thief, Jameel Ahed, was frustrated because he wasn’t given full control over the project. He quit the company and, after reworking the design, was able to recreate the Packbot’s special rotating paddles which kept it upright on rocky terrain.

Ahed started a company called Robotic FX and almost beat out iRobot for a military contract, leading the company to bring a lawsuit against one of its top engineers.

On Monday, August 20, a district court judge in Alabama issued a temporary restraining order against Robotic FX, demanding that it preserve “all evidence, information, data, and documents.” The next day, iRobot’s lawyers showed up at Robotic FX’s office, US marshals in tow.

They searched the office, then Ahed’s parents’ house, and finally headed to Hill’s apartment in Chicago. Ahed and Hill got there first, barely, and went in through the back door. Hill let the marshals in the front while Ahed ran to the bedroom. His laptop was there, its screen displaying a message that the hard drive had been wiped clean. He unplugged it, put it in a case, and slid the case underneath the bed. Then he went to the living room, where the marshals were asking Hill where the computers were. She didn’t mention the laptop. They found it anyway.

Ahed is currently banned from competing in robotics and iRobot eventually bought his assets, essentially folding in his copycat robot back into its own project. IP theft doesn’t pay, kids.