Laptop thieves - worse than content thieves!
Computers stolen from office in the middle of the day!
I just got an email from Bill Hartzer stating:
As you might already know, we had several laptops stolen from our offices on Wednesday. The guy walked right into our offices during lunch time and walked out with laptops, a cell phone, and a purse.
Please–please make sure you secure everything in your office as people are getting bolder and bolder now. I honestly didn’t think someone would walk right in while we are all in the office. Due to the fact that the police wouldn’t show up and take a report even though we have surveillance video, I was able to get MarketNet featured on CBS last night. Here’s a link to the report
Crazy eh? This could happen just as well to my business….could it happen to yours too? It really is something to think about.
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December 16th, 2005 at 1:24 pm
Confrences really scare me, the people there would really know what to do with my laptop if they stole it. After Matt’s “know your backlinks” session I have to imagine his laptop would be a very enticing target, especially when he’s publically posted he’s disabled the password on the screensaver http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/disable-screensaver-password/
December 16th, 2005 at 1:40 pm
hum….how much you think Matt’s computer would sell for on ebay? hehe.
December 16th, 2005 at 1:51 pm
off to register buymattcuttslaptop.com
December 16th, 2005 at 3:24 pm
I can relate to this personally…had my laptop stolen from my car in broad daylight. They broke my window, grabbed it, and took off. It happened a year ago right after SES Chicago. I hadn’t made a backup in three months so I lost a lot of work, and unfortunately there’s no chance you’ll ever get your computer back.
Holidays seem to be the time when either thieves are more desperate or we’re more vulnerable.
December 16th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
After going through this experience, I’m looking into LoJack for my laptop, a hidden app that you can install on the laptop that ‘phones home’ so they can recover it. There’s some guarantee on the service.
December 16th, 2005 at 9:11 pm
You should seriously consider having a USB hard drive and do regular backups (daily or weekly if possible.) In order to be effective it needs to be stored in a different place than the laptop, of course.
December 17th, 2005 at 7:14 pm
yes, a laptop thief is worse than a content theif.
a content thief is on par with music / software piracy
have you paid for all your mp3s, jim?
December 17th, 2005 at 7:37 pm
hehe…. that’s kinda a loaded question to me Quadszilla…I used to work for a company called aimster (was second Napster)… I’ll plead the fifth on that (for those who don’t know, that’s US slang for “I’m not telling you the answer because if I did I’d be admitting a crime”)
December 17th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
there’s also a good thread on this at webmasterworld (in supporters forum) with some good ideas as well on what to do if your laptop is ever stolen.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum78/10309.htm
December 18th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
We’ve had issues with this where I work now, so the front door is always locked these days.
I once went to visit a friend at SAP in Philly a few years ago, the office door was open, and no-one was there, yet the bathroom had a combination lock on it. It turns out that a couple of months earlier, a couple of people had hid in the rest room, then when the building had closed up for the night, had gone into the offices and walked out with some servers, so the decision was made to lock the bathrooms down. I wonder if they ever came to the same realisation about the actual office door…
December 19th, 2005 at 11:10 pm
[...] Why even use a desktop?…I just can’t see using a desktop for "important" stuff….if it’s important, I want it portable…and I want it wherever I go…at the office, at home, at a conference (and yes, I make backups before each trip in case the computer dies)…and will take more precausions after reading what happened to Bill. [...]