MacBook stolen - serial number?
 

OK. OK (yes, I know.....), just had my MB stolen from a locked car. Even so. where can I get the serial number from? I registered with Apple - can I get it from them?

Just had lunch in this wee seaside town where I live in Southern Thailand and it is gone. Data OK via .Mac, but gutted is not the word. That's a grand Sterling down the tube. B$%^&*d!

Any advice very much appreciated.

Edit: I have the number in Bangkok but will not be back there for over a week...

If you have an AppleCare policy on that machine, you can find the agreement number online via http://www.apple.com/support, under "Register and View AppleCare Agreements." You could then contact the local AppleCare number and--maybe--get someone to provide the serial number for you. Even without a policy, since you've registered the machine, a sympathetic customer service representative might be willing to help if you can provide enough information about who you are to assure him/her that you're not up to something sneaky.

It will be none too soon for Intel to come up with their onboard chip, anti-theft mechanism.

Personally, I would like to see GPS installed standard on all laptops with a sort of Lojack system to nab these thieves at the source.

Sorry to hear about the loss of your MacBook. And yes, I am sure Apple has your serial number in their files.

There's also Undercover, which combines a phone-home mechanism with using the motion sensor, camera, and audio to discourage theft. (I am not a customer...yet.) None of these can prevent actual theft, although they might only aid in recovery. A little anti-theft I use is that if I know I need to leave it in a car, I always try to hide it in the trunk before starting to drive to the destination, never after arriving. Heck, I'll even pull over half a mile before the destination to hide it. I really try to avoid hiding it after parking. The reason is that you can easily be observed "hiding" it and the thief knows all they have to do is wait until you will inevitably walk away.

I heard that you should report stolen computers to Apple, as if a person brings it to Apple for repairs or something, when the repair guy types in the serial number, it will show up as stolen, and, well, something else will happen from there.

Well, this link isn't of much help to you anymore, but it's a good read:
http://www.freemacblog.com/how-to-pr...-a-stolen-mac/

I just hope you had a mean password on there

Thanks guys. Password was OK. Undercover might be worth looking at.

It was just complacency. I looked at those AppleCare agreements, but that only seems to be extension cover, i.e. not the first year warranty. The MB was only bought in November, so it is still in the year one deal.

Just realised that I had not backed up my recent photos.:(

OK, my amazing assistant has found the invoice c/w serial number.

Now what?

I Googled around, but found nothing pointing to a register of stolen Macs.

Ideas anyone?

MTIA

Gavin

Buy another one.
What are you going to do with the serial number? Tell the police? Good luck with that.

That's not going help at all. His personal/business data can still be easily accessed, unless it was stored in an encrypted disk image (such as FileVault).
The system can also be easily wiped by the thief, and a new system installed.
A firmware password might have helped a little bit, but can still be circumvented.

If you have your credit card numbers anywhere on that computer, you should assume the worst, and cancel them ASAP. Think hard, you might not even realize that they have been stored on there. Also, alert clients that their personal/business data has been compromised. Let them do as they see fit.

I meant from an Apple POV. After 16 years, I am well aware of the limitations of the local Feds. (Please note how I avoided leaden sarcasm there.)

Does Apple operate a stolen list? Much Googling appears to say: "not".

Search the internet for MacBooks for sale in Thailand (with the same specs), then buy it back from whoever stole it.

My advice is: Don't bet on the Mac to show up in an Apple Care center. Even if it does eventually come in, the owner will certainly not be the one who "nicked it" from you.

Contact Apple. The worst that can happen is that they can just say, "Sorry". However, they may have some policy in place for stolen MacBooks within warranty. I doubt it, but then, you never know! They may even have some sort of serial number alert database in case someone tries to send it for repair.

Exactly schneb. I have emailed the chappie who writes the Mac column in our main English language paper - if anyone knows, he will. We don't have Apple here per se, just agents. The main Apple regional office is in Singapore (which is where I bought the MB), but I am not due there for a few weeks yet.

Good excuse to get an MBA, but I will still wait for a HDD spec bump.

Cheers!

Perhaps if you advertise a nominal reward if they will come forward to return your "lost" item. Granted...they would have to be a pretty witless thief to do that.

I can't wait for the day when MacBooks will have a multiple-user thumb-print access point, GPS LoJack-styled tracking, auto email of location via wifi, and a common HD encryption based on a password (invisible to the user until needed to retrieve a trashed file). The best way to curb theft is to not make the unit worth the risk. The higher the risk, the less of a target it will become.

heres an idea if you remember the your ip address on the mb? if you do you can go to this web site and find out where the last place it has been it will give you a local map and what not. this is the web site (http://whatismyipaddress.com/).

Good try, but I think you've missed the mark. The IP address doesn't follow the Mac wherever it goes. The IP address given from that website is for your current location. So, my IP address right now is 11.2.333.444. If I disconnect this Mac, then use another Mac in it's place, the IP address will still be reported as 11.2.333.444.

If you could search by hardware address, and get the current IP address of that hardware, then get a street address corresponding to that IP address, you could trace the machine wherever it is being used.

just a though i really do not know much about how the network and ip stuff works very well. so just throwing that out there. would'nt someone who knows a little about macs be able to do that not just some random dude who steels your computer out of your car or is that just common sense now?

This application Lockdown looks promising as a kind of theft alert device. I don't think it would have helped in your situation, but keep it in mind for the future.

Where is the serial number on a MacBook Pro? I don't know mine because I didn't buy the machine, it was a gift from my son -- I don't have a receipt.

In System Profiler: Hardware Overview, and in the battery well. There may also be third location inside of the Mac's casing.
Link to Apple KB document.

Merci beaucoup.

Most people have several devices such as phones and mp3 players that can store data. My advice is to back up sensitive info on another device. For example, put the computer serial numbers on your ipod and put the phone serial number on your computer. Unless, you are completely wiped out, you will be better able to retrieve the information.

The old pencil and paper still work well the last time I looked. File it away since people are less likely to steal paper.

Well, it's all good and well, I have all my data backed-up automatically to my xserve. I heavily use encrypted files on my MacBook just to make sure that personal data won't fall into strange hands in case MacBook gonna get stolen.

Just recently I installed a tracing software on it as well in hope that whoever steals my travel workhorse is stupid enough and that software works.

I heard of a solution that involves SSHing into your stolen computer (somehow) and getting the IP address that way.

You would need the IP to ssh into it in the first place because I doubt you could resolve a client machine by DNS.

You may want to look into low jack or something like that, or another application that "phones home" every once in a while so if it gets stolen you can see the IP when it phones home.

Low Jack ain't cheap, however -- $39/year.

$39 for one year? That is like less than 5 bucks per a month. I would say that is pretty cheap for that service.

Sure, but what does insurance cost, discounted by their recovery rate.

Doesn't low jack actually pay you back your investment if they are unable to retrieve your laptop? I thought I had read that some where, so it is basically an insurance program.

Just thought I'd drop my hat into this since my MacBook Pro was stolen in July 2007.

At least stateside, your best bet is getting it covered under homeowner's insurance, if you have it. I've never tried LoJack, and iAlertU never got a chance to work because the computer was off, and the thief never managed to get past my password. (They could have started up in Vista, but they were probably too stupid to do so)

I tried calling Apple, and they pretty much shrugged their shoulders at me and told me there was nothing they could do. This is Apple America, though, so you may have better luck with your regional Apple support.

EDIT: I would think LoJack would be screwed if it required you to login to your computer in order for it to work. Am I right?

How 'bout this: http://www.mark-up.com/store/MacBook-Call-Home/ gets your Serial Number, make your Mac call home and free!

I use a higher end (corporate version) of low jack and I can tell you right now, if there is network connectivity it phones home once a day, records all kinds of stuff and yes we have used it to recover stolen laptops. Low jack is their consumer level product of the same thing we use.

It is a root level daemon, so you would have to have admin rights to the machine or wipe out the HD completely. I am going to say that most common thieves probably don't know how to do either, and if you put a firmware lock on it that is just more of a deterrent.

Of course there is no stopping a slightly educated thief from wiping all that stuff off and reloading OS X.

This sounds normal. If someone steals a car, the victim doesn't run back to the car dealership for help with the VIN number, or if someone steals a diamond ring the victim doesn't go to the jeweler for help. It's a matter involving law enforcement and the insurance company. Same with Macs. If Apple did get involved with these things it would be a highly unusual practice.

If you have stolen Mac and its serial number - report it here:
http://www.mark-up.com/stolen/report-apple-stolen.htm

I don't know how comfortable I'd be entering my details into a database on a site who's main page is about making money on the internet. Call me suspicious.

I'm sorry, but that site looks very untrustworthy.

I know that the corporate version of low jack works like this:

We install their package, it is a root level daemon that launches at boot up every time and whenever there is an internet connection it "phones home" and captures data. That data is then uploaded to their servers and we can view it. It lists the local IP, the WAN IP, and does a whois look up for us automatically. We can then submit this information to that local police department and they will either subpoena the ISP for the user's address or the ISP will just comply depending on their relationship with the local police department. A police report must also be filed as well, so everything is legal.

Last year we had 22 laptops stolen, and we recovered 21 of them this way. 1 was gone and our insurance program paid for it.

We can also remotely blow out a HD with it too, to render the machine useless or destroy any sensitive data that may be on it.

If low jack is anything like their corporate version then it is a pretty good product.

This thread is good food for thought.

I was approached by a client two weeks ago to assist with installing Leopard onto a MacBook. He claimed that it was a gift from a friend, but he didn't have any passwords, discs, etc. I strongly suspected that it was stolen, but I had no way to verify.

Is there a central database that's being widely used for posting serial numbers of stolen Macs/PCs?
How much hassle would it be to ask the police in his city (somewhere in England) for reported serial numbers of stolen Macs?

You know it wouldn't be all that hard to create a launchd item that runs once a day and emails a certain account with current network information. Not sure how effective it would be in tracking down said thief but you could maybe give those IPs to the police, or if you have like remote desktop or VNC enabled you can try to get access that way since you know the IPs. At that point though a web based remote desktop would be best, like logmein.com or something to that effect.

AFAIK, O'Grady's PowerPage used to be an excellent database of serial numbers back a long time ago; not sure now.

A quick search on Google turned up several databases, and that seems to be the problem. All of this information is fragmented and scattered around the internet. A database is only as good as the amount of information it holds, so it looks like a concerned buyer would have to search multiple locations, and that would only be fruitful if the original owner thought to post the serial number in the first place.

The PowerMax database looks like it has the most potential.

GavinBKK: What did you end up doing with your MacBook's serial number?