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EMERGENCY! My MacBook was STOLEN

Z

Zendar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 22, 2008
7
0
Hello All, i am in great trouble. My macbook was stolen this afternoon at my university, I went to the university police and they told me that i may give them my Macbook SN number, so that the regional police may track the machine's location whenever it comes online.

But i have long thrown away my Box, I can't find my receipt, and i don't remember i used SN to register at Apple.com. The only thing i can still find that bears a SN is the remote control, yet i m not pretty sure if that's the SN of my Macbook too as it wasn't mentioned in any document. The customer support has closed right now.

So can someone please tell me Any other possible way to find my SN? or may someone find their remote control, compare the SN on its back and the SN you find on battery back or "APPLE"->"ABOUT THIS MAC", tell me if they matches?

I hope I can get an answer ASAP, before my 2-year-accumulated data is ripped off by that person.

My greatest gratitude to your help.
 
Place a call to Apple and see if they have it with your Apple Care plan if it was still active, but the remote # is not the same as the computer, I just checked mine.
 
If you did go online and register your purchase with Apple when you bought it, they will have your SN stored. All hardware purchases must have the SN to register. If you did not, then that presents a problem! :(

Good luck- I hope you have success in getting it back!
 
Give apple the e-mail you registered them with. They will automatically be able to tell you their s/n. If you didn't register tho....that could be a problem
 
Thank you guys very much. I've found my receipt in piles of papers, and gave the SN to police, which made a small progress after all. Because i switched on the start-up password login, i m afraid that person may format and install a system(possibly, windows) on it, then i m done. It will be like finding my beloved girlfriend that has been away for 10 years but she ends up lost all her memory. Anyway, may the internet hook catch the thief before my macbook get raped. Thank you again for your responds.
 
Zendar said:
Thank you guys very much. I've found my receipt in piles of papers, and gave the SN to police, which made a small progress after all. Because i switched on the start-up password login, i m afraid that person may format and install a system(possibly, windows) on it, then i m done. It will be like finding my beloved girlfriend that has been away for 10 years but she ends up lost all her memory. Anyway, may the internet hook catch the thief before my macbook get raped. Thank you again for your responds.
Click to expand...
Internet hook? Erm. Excuse me for my ignorance, but do they actually have any way of tracking your Macbook? Unless you've installed some tracking software or whatever, then I'm afraid you are out of luck. Even if it did connect to the internet, they would be needing the MAC address of whatever network card was used to connected, not the serial number.

Of course, let me know if you know differently.
 
7031 said:
Internet hook? Erm. Excuse me for my ignorance, but do they actually have any way of tracking your Macbook? Unless you've installed some tracking software or whatever, then I'm afraid you are out of luck. Even if it did connect to the internet, they would be needing the MAC address of whatever network card was used to connected, not the serial number.

Of course, let me know if you know differently.
Click to expand...

He doesn't know differently. Unless you specifically installed a tracking software like Lojack, nobody can trace your computer - not even the police. Even with a Mac address, its impossible as they (a) are easily spoofed and (b) more importantly, the ISP is going to see the Mac address of the router, not the computer (everyone uses a router these days) so there isn't even a sliver of a possibility that MAC tracking could work (not that he has the MAC anyways).

There is no magical serial number input where you can just find where a computer connected to the internet... how could that even make sense?

Your computer is gone, and unless the guy gets arrested for something else with it on his person, its gone for good. Hopefully your renters/dorm/parents homeowners insurance covers it.
 
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