MacBook Stolen - What happens?

[jfriedman8]

Hi,
I had my car broken into in late December and my MacBook, iPad, Lenovo amongst other peripherals were all stolen. Stupid me left my backpack on the seat as I just happened to be in a different vehcile that day. Anyway, I am just curious what happens with the MacBook and iPad? They were both locked, both have Find My Mac / Find My iPad active. The crooks turned the iPad off right away, but I am wondering what do these criminals do with the devices / can they wipe them when locked? FWIW, the iPad has Verizon LTE so the second it gets turned on it might connect to the internet - I am not sure if my company has cancelled it yet.

I've checked find my Mac/iPad almost everyday just to see and my Mac just says "Erase Requested" and then the date. Everything was taken care of with insurance, I am just more curious than anything what they even do with these locked devices?

If anyone has any suggestions on other resrouces to maybe track any of this stuff down that would be great. I've checked CL periodically with no luck.
Thanks!

 

[KPOM]

My guess is that these either get sold "turned off" to unsuspecting buyers who then realize too late that they are locked, or they get chopped up for parts sold on sites like Craigslist. I once had a MacBook Air that Find my Mac actually found in an airport lobby the day after I realized I had left it on an airplane. Unfortunately I called the airport, airline, TSA, etc. and it was never recovered, though I did receive a confirmation that it was erased. Whoever found it and turned it on never turned it in, it seems. Insurance covered it after a deductible.

 

[jfriedman8]

That sucks in your situation too. I'm just more curious than anything as to what they do. I don't think I had firewall on that computer, and it seems it's pretty easy via googling to get into the computer then. I didn't really have anything irreplaceable on there as it was not my main machine, but it would be nice to get it back. Just wish there were some better security methods; hopefully in the future. Would be great if there was like a GPS sticky that drew incredibly small power that was good for like 3 years hidden inside the casing. One can dream.

 

[Howard2k]

That sucks in your situation too. I'm just more curious than anything as to what they do. I don't think I had firewall on that computer, and it seems it's pretty easy via googling to get into the computer then. I didn't really have anything irreplaceable on there as it was not my main machine, but it would be nice to get it back. Just wish there were some better security methods; hopefully in the future. Would be great if there was like a GPS sticky that drew incredibly small power that was good for like 3 years hidden inside the casing. One can dream.

There is. Similar. Open it up and squeeze a Tile in there. Hardware will survive a software reset.

And firewall only protects against network access, not local access

 

[davidnayzar]

The Macbook lock is not a rocket science to remove. Any person with programming experience can remove the EFI lock. It takes less than 10 minutes to remove the EFI lock. So just consider as you learnt a lesson not to leave stuffs visible when you are not around.

 

[Howard2k]

The Macbook lock is not a rocket science to remove. Any person with programming experience can remove the EFI lock. It takes less than 10 minutes to remove the EFI lock. So just consider as you learnt a lesson not to leave stuffs visible when you are not around.

The EFI is written in COBOL?