Eighteen-year-old “technology entrepreneur” and Bentley College student Mark Bao had his MacBook Air stolen in February. Unlike other bright-eyed college freshmen, Bao didn’t write his laptop off as gone forever (ok, maybe he did–he went out and purchased another laptop the very same night it was stolen), he set out to find the thief.
Using online backup software BackBlaze that he’d installed on his laptop, Bao was able to see the machine’s browser history and track any hard drive updates.
“Woah. Thanks to @Backblaze, I think I might be able to figure out who stole my MacBook Air at college. Creeping through the Safari history!” Bao Tweeted on March 19.
Apparently the first thing the thief did was take a photo of himself using the laptop’s Photo Booth program. Bao discovered this little gem and took to Twitter: “Wow. The first thing that MacBook thieves do REALLY IS take pictures on Photo Booth. I didn’t think they were that dumb!” Bao wrote in a Tweet.
After discovering the photo, Bao discovered a video the thief had taken of himself dancing to Tyga’s “Make it Rain.” Bao uploaded the video to Vimeo, managed to hunt down the guy’s Facebook page using the aforementioned Safari history, and then turned everything over to the police.
Needless to say, the gig was up for our dancing thief, who returned the laptop to the police and sent Bao an apology note on Facebook (the two attended the same school and had mutual friends). Bao told the Daily Mail that he holds no grudges against the thief, because “I don’t have time nor patience to. There are more important things in life.”
Mark no longer has any use for his old laptop, so he’s selling it and donating the proceeds to the Red Cross Japan fund.