How to Make it Harder for Someone to Steal and Sell Your PowerBook

While it's nice that Macs are becoming more popular, this unfortunately increases the likelihood of having your Mac laptop stolen. Someone I know recently told me about the theft of her Apple laptop. She had a 12" PowerBook G4, an 867 MHz version exactly like mine.

While not exactly new, this machine still fetches about $1,000 on eBay, so it's still profitable for thieves to take and resell.

It's obviously impossible to prevent someone from taking your machine in the first place, however there are several ways to make sure that you can get your machine back, some with the help of features built into the current version of Mac OS X.

The first thing is very easy. Keep your receipts, the original box, the paperwork, and make a note of your computer's serial number. If your machine does get stolen, the serial number and proof of purchase can be helpful when reporting the theft to the police.

Unfortunately, my friend had none of this (she had bought it used off of eBay), and therefore she is now looking at low-cost replacement machines.

The second one plays off the assumption that whoever steals your machine probably knows relatively little about Macs and plans to simply resell your machine in order to make a quick profit.

There are a few things you can do to the operating system to make life a lot more difficult for them.

In all versions of Mac OS X, you can prevent the machine from automatically logging in at startup. Set it so it asks for a password each time the machine is booted. You can do this with 'Login Options' in the 'Accounts' section of System Preferences (this may be different for older versions of OS X).

In Mac OS X 10.3, you can also set the machine to ask for a password upon waking from a screen saver or sleep mode. This is done in the 'Security' section of System Preferences.

The next thing to do is edit the BootPanel so that it shows your name and contact information. It's very easy to do. From the 'Go' menu, select 'Go to Folder', type /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemStarter/QuartzDisplay.bundle/Resources and click OK. A folder will open up with 'BootPanel.pdf' inside. Drag it to the desktop, rename it something like 'BootPanelInactive.pdf', and copy it back to the Resources folder.

When the box comes up telling you that 'Resources' cannot be modified, just click 'authenticate', and type your user password. Now copy the file 'BootPanel.pdf' to the desktop again, and open it up in a graphics editor such as Photoshop.

I edited my BootPanel to show my name and phone number. The theory behind this is that a thief unfamiliar with Macs would find that he can't gain access to the computer's desktop because of the passwords and would see your name and phone number when he's trying to restart the machine. Thus he might figure that he can get some sort of reward money for calling and claiming that he found the missing PowerBook - as selling a machine blocked completely by passwords would be highly suspicious.

The last thing that you can do is engrave your name in the bottom of the computer's casing or inside the battery compartment. A sticker can be peeled of easily, but an engraving is something that can't be removed without evidence and would make an eBay sale difficult - especially if the engraved name didn't match the seller's name!

Basically, what you want to do is make your Mac laptop an undesirable thing for someone to steal, while at the same time not making it uncomfortable for you to use it yourself.

You could always put a 'Go Vegan!' bumper sticker on the top (like one student has here at my university). It's almost impossible to remove and sure to detract from the laptop's value - while at the same time highly personalizing the machine (assuming, that is, you're vegan).

One more really good reason to password protect your 'Book (and possibly your dekstop Mac as well) is any passwords, credit card numbers, and other information that may be stored in your keychain and browser autofill data.

For more on this topic, see Recovering a Stolen PowerBook, The Best Way to Prevent Laptop Theft, and Is Your Mac Secure?

You might also want to investigate recovery assisting programs such as LapCop, Secure Notebook X, Stealth Signal, and MacPhoneHome, which can have your 'Book get in touch with you if it's been stolen.

Finally, make regular backup so if your Mac is stolen you at least still have your files. I like to use SuperDuper with an external FireWire drive, but there are lots of other ways of backing up as well. dk