MacBook is home safe thanks to social media
You’ve probably heard about the guy who had his MacBook stolen and used the Hidden application to take photos of his robber. Well his MacBook is home safe now and I thought we could all learn something about the power of social media from this story.
In a nutshell, here’s the timeline:
March 21 – Joshua Kaufman had his new Oakland apartment broken into and his laptop and few other items were stolen.
March 22 – Joshua activated the theft-tracking software (Hidden).
March 24 – Joshua started receiving photos taken by the computer’s built in camera from Hidden, which showed the unauthorised user. Among the photos was a screenshot of the man logging into his email account, which revealed the name of a taxi company. Joshua presumed this was the his workplace and took the information to the police… who were unwilling to help.
May 27 – Joshua decided to take action and set up the blog called This Guy Has My MacBook, including images of the thief, in an attempt to track him down.
May 31 – After not getting a huge response from the blog, Joshua hit up Twitter. Within a few hours, it had been retweeted and liked thousands of times.
Later that afternoon… The local police department was contacted by Good Morning America who had joined the MacBook reclaiming bandwagon. Joshua received a call from the police saying that they were following up the case immediately.
May 31 – The thief was arrested, based on evidence gathered buy Hidden.
June 1 – Joshua picked up his MacBook from the police station.
The bad guy gets locked up, the MacBook is reunited with his rightful owner and we all live happily ever after, thanks to our pal, social media.
Yours in success stories,
Anya