The Cost of Living in Public
Wednesday, July 18, 2012 at 10:32AM Over the past 5 years I have posted many videos on YouTube of me sitting in my office yabbering away about some topic or other, behind me two large computer screens on which I work. Very public, very accessible.
The night before last 2 very professional burglars broke into my office and stole those two computers, an iPad, a camera and some other small items. There were not passing crims who had a look around to see what they could get, this was a targeted attack, they knew what was in the office, due to window blinds it’s impossible to see in. They only took what they wanted to get, didn’t do much damage, then walked across my garden to their car that was parked outside.
My 15 year old daughter and I were sleeping in the house. My office is part of the same building but with its own entrance, thankfully the thieves didn’t come into the house.
To say and event like this immediately sends your life into a spiral of fear, chaos and unbelievable hassle is a massive understatement
Although they left rather more clues than they may have planned and the police have been very professional and supportive, as you may expect, the prospect of them being caught is minimal.
The computers were old, packed full of personal information, years of episodes of carpool and fully charged and all the back up material associated with those efforts.
The machines are password protected, as in you can’t boot them up without a password unless you are fairly sophisticated, but I have had to spend the last 24 hours changing passwords on everything I use.
You have to remember two things. One I have a rubbish memory and two, we are talking 15 plus years of computer and online legacy. Laziness, lack of fear and generally sloppy behaviour means I have used very weak and easy to remember passwords.
This all now has to change.
Here’s another thing, I am currently installing 1password on all my machines, as in, I hadn’t finished the process. Engage deep regret mode. I am now going to install a mass of CCTV cameras all over the house, inside and out, constantly monitoring everything and sending the resulting images to a remote location
But, here’s the plus and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Thanks to my hero Leo Laporte, I use Carbonite. Everything on my main computer, everything is backed up remotely. 39.5 gigabytes. Every family picture, video of the kids, every manuscript, screenplay, stage script, diary, discussion paper, pitch document, over 50,0000 documents in all, securely backed up and accessible.
So I did one thing right. I used Carbonite.
One last thing, due to this crime I missed giving a talk for Siemens PLM at the NEC in Birmingham yesterday morning. They managed to re-arrange things so I could appear there late afternoon and it was wonderful to see what they are doing, meet loads of brilliant engineers, forget about passwords and shitty little criminals and have a bit of a laugh, so I’d like to thank the great folks behind the event for asking me along.
Reader Comments (35)
Cloud storage is a game changer, I'm glad you didn't lose anything data wise as those photos/videos/documents cannot be replaced... fortunately computers can be :)
Sorry to hear that Robert. I hope they didn't get your Drobo.
Whoever they are, I hope their next shit is a porcupine.
Robert, I am very sorry to hear of this targeted burglary at your home. Goodness hopes that they are brought to justice and that your possessions find their way back to you somehow. But as you say, thank christ for remote back-up!
Alex
So sorry to hear what you've been through. I know it's trite to say it could have been worse, but it could have been... chin up, you did something right, and let's hope the police catch the barstewards. My office was targeted by idiot thieves several years ago who managed to take pictures of themselves on a disposable camera on my desk ( which they left behind), so they were easy to find and were prosecuted fairly sharpish!
So sorry to hear what you've been through. I know it's trite to say it could have been worse, but it could have been... chin up, you did something right, and let's hope the police catch the barstewards. My office was targeted by idiot thieves several years ago who managed to take pictures of themselves on a disposable camera on my desk ( which they left behind), so they were easy to find and were prosecuted fairly sharpish!
Been there mate - it blows.
Reminds me that I should finish uploading my photos.
Sorry to hear about this incident Robert. Getting anything stolen that you depend on leaves you with such a horrific feeling. It does ease and the anger will subside eventually. All you can do is learn from the experience and prevent it from happening again.
Carbonite looks not bad, but you could always use Dropbox too/instead? Very easy to use and for just over £63 per year you get 100gb backup.
Sorry if that sounded like a sales pitch lol I don't know if you've checked it out before so thought I would mention it.
That sucks. Did you have the remote lock/find me option turned on the iPad. I'll pop over to Amazon and download your new book, that'll add 2p to your CCTV fund ;-)
Robert this is a real hassle and what a relief the thieves didn't enter your house!
I'm sure this has been mentioned but the iPad may be trackable through iCloud. Go to www.icloud.com and click on "Find my iPhone", there's a chance (albeit a slim one) that they didn't disable the sim card or account and you could find the bastards.
There's also a great article to help you prevent the accounts from being disabled on your next iPad (link here: http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2010/12/31/keep-thevies-from-disabling-find-my-iphone-with-three-steps/)
I'm not familiar with the setup that was stolen, but if you use Macs I would suggest you enable FileVault, this is a whole disk encryption system and is free with the operating system.
It's great that you use Carbonite, losing the machine is a hassle, losing your digital life is downright debilitating. Good job there!
Oh, and my handy tip for easy to remember but complex passwords: Use the car registration numbers of any two cars you have previously owned: You get a nice random mix of letters and numbers that have no direct connection to you or your family (as in predictable things like dates of birth) and all you have to remember is "the blue BMW and the grey Astra" (example).
Best of luck for the future, and I hope your family doesn't feel too violated, though I realise that must be impossible to overcome right now.
Gutted for you Bob. Good to know you still have a lot of your stuff though.
When I got my Mac the first thing I installed was software called Prey Project. I've got it on my phone too. I work in the News industry and saw a report on the police tracing a thief in realtime. The software takes screenshots of the desktop, snaps images from the webcam and traces the computers location using wifi. The police caught the thief red handed.
As ironic as it is, if your hard drives are encrypted and password protected then your stuff will get dumped or wiped. Mine is completely open, with the hope that any thief will just get on and use the computer. At the same time, I'll be sitting in a police station tracking them.
I might be giving myself a length of rope to hang with, but I know that everything I own is backed up too, and anything deeply personal is encrypted anyway.
Hope to hear some good news with the investigation.
Thats not good. Glad you had everything backed up. Seen as you're a fan of electricity, I suggest a metal door plugged into the mains, with remote locking. Just keep your kids away from it! Watch Home Alone for tips.
I hope they catch the idiots, but as we all know that's difficult. Isn't there a remote app for the ipad for tracking, wiping etc?
So sorry for you and your family. I had something stolen years ago, rather large, rather expensive and part of my everyday life. Luckily neither myself or my children were involved and as trite as it always sounds, "things" can be replaced. Funny now all I can remember mostly about my reaction at the time was that I just couldn't process that it had happened. I kept looking as if I somehow might have moved the thing and forgotten overnight that I had. Or that someone else had moved it and not told me overnight. The human brain. It will all come together again, and although it will take time to lose the violated feelings, the anger, and the frustration of it all, eventually they will fade. Sorry again, it really sucks sometimes to be human, and to expect other humans to be as thoughtful as you are.
Hi Robert,
sorry to hear about your misfortune. Lets hope they are caught soon.
I look forward to hearing, soon, about them being caught, having their human rights removed - after all, they voluntarily gave up their rights when they willingly violated yours - and falling down any number of steep flights of stairs.
Hope you get all your stuff back and these toe rags get put away for a long time.
Cheers,
Norm.
I really feel for you Bob, I 'm glad that you had backed everything up and that there is at least that, but, as a father myself, i really empathise with you and your need to put the CCTV cameras everywhere with a fear for your daughters safety, not only is it a shitty crime, but its also a gross invasion of your space but also a terrible invasion of your trust.
You trusted that the videos you put out were going to be enjoyed and appreciated by your fans and friends, but some low life scuzz-bagger has taken those videos made with passion and love and used them to attack you, what kind of evil bastard does that? really, were they trawling famous peoples videos to see who had what, or more disgustingly, were they followers or fans that just decided you'd make an easy target? I hope you had find my iPhone app installed on your iPad and were on the cloud, or there is some other way the police manage to catch these low life scum. You have my sympathies, couldn't have happened to a nicer, more undeserving man.
Deeply sorry. My mother-in-law has just been through something similar. Criminals steal more than physical items. Although it's not punishment enough, I hope every item they took brings those bastards misery, and I hope they choke on something they really like.
Glad you and your family are safe. Thank you for sharing a very important lesson with all of us.
Sorry to hear that. Sure it's quite unsettling. Just a thought, if the computers backup to the cloud there may be a slim chance they have been plugged in by the thieves and tried to backup - this would have logged their IP. Of course, that's if they had been plugged in. Of course they's also the Find iPhone / iPad thingimy.
Alex makes a very good point. If anybody turns your computer on and connects it to the net, it will immediately start to talk to the Carbonite servers. If you can ask them which IP addresses have accessed your accout since the computer was stolen, you may well be able to track down the thief. Other cloud and internet services you use may be able to help you as well.
Sorry to hear that Robert. These people really are the scum of the earth, but alas unless we have some decent form of deterent in this country, things like this will continue. Prison isn't what it should be and does nothing to deter this kind of thing - that's even IF they make it to prison in the first place. However, this is a discussion for another time.
Take solace that, having read about your plight, I shall immediately be looking into off-site backup options for all the precious family photos and data that I have on my PC and local backup. The thought of losing them is simply unimaginable. As an IT person I really should know better but never actually got around to doing it. That will now become a priority for me.
So be thankful you had the foresight and good advise to do likewise before you actually needed and and as other have said - computers can be replaced and although very annoying and inconvenient - nothing precious has been lost.
Very sorry to hear of your burgulary. You will recover in time. Its bad enough that they took your possessions dont let them get to you personally. There is always someone wants what you have but are not prepared to work hard for it. My son was once knocked off his bike and had the bike taken. I had to go and pick him up from a house where he had been taken in and I have to say I was that mad, if I had seen anyone with his bike, I would have run over them and taken the consequences! Good job I didnt really, his bike was recovered three months later in a pawn shop and returned to him. Police said it would have been for drugs. Anyway, I do hope the police recover the items and catch and lock them away. You will feel better with more security and just put it down to one of lifes experiences...and move on...