James Merlin from Minnesota runs the SETI@home screensaver/analysis software on his computers. Every so often, it pings the University of California servers and logs the IP address of the computer it’s running on. When his wife’s laptop was stolen, he checked the SETI@home database and found that his stolen computer was still pinging UC - and reporting the IP address. He reported it to the police, they subpoenaed the ISP for the street address, and the stolen laptop was returned. No one has yet been arrested.

Slashdot link (”Seti finally finds something”) here. Article here.

Posted Friday, February 23rd, 2007 @ 8:35 am
Filed in science and tech

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Further reading

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1. Reducing iPod thefts
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3. No privacy problem