Laptop stolen w/iCloud enabled - next steps??

[djc6]

My wife's laptop was stolen. We filed a police report and gave them the serial number. I have backups on both my time capsule and via backblaze (cloud backup).

The laptop is registered with the iCloud 'Find My iPhone' app, and Backblaze also provides a 'Locate my computer' service. My question is, should I erase the laptop or not? I feel like erasing it will eliminate the chances of tracking it, that I should give it a couple days. Wife wants to erase it now, which i know it needs to appear online and hasn't so far.

For some reason the laptop doesn't have a "Notify me when found" checkbox like the iphone/ipad do on our icloud account. It would be nice if I could be notified when it begins the erasure process so we have a location/ip address, but icloud seems doesn't seem to have any historical data. Its been less than 24 hours since it was last online, and iCloud had no location info. Thankfully backblaze does show you the last location.

 

[poiihy]

You should erase it.

 

[djc6]

This blog seems to indicate that even if you replace the HDD, the laptop should pop up on 'Find my iPhone' since those settings are kept in NVRAM?

http://clburlison.com/blog/2014/05/19/find-my-mac/

 

[Artimus12]

I kind of understand Apple not giving you the location details - you might do something you'll regret later if you found the thief.

Remove the link to the blog explaining how to disable FMM, Erase it, then go back every few days and send another Erase command.

You never know, it might show up in the trash near you soon.

 

[blooperz]

I'd just set it to erase, but honestly by this point you won't see it online again so it doesn't even matter. It's easy enough to reset a mac, unless you have an EFI password enabled and even then, there are still workarounds...find my iPhone is really only useful if the person that stole it has no idea what they are doing.