My ex-wife recently presented my daughter with a laptop computer that she had purchased from a "friend" of hers for $100. When I checked out the laptop I noticed that the opening splash screen upon booting was for a local corporation. I contacted the corporation to see if they happened to be missing any laptops. Turns out they recently had a number of them stolen and when I gave them the serial number of the one on my daughters, no surprise that it was one of the stolen laptops.
This "friend" of my ex-wife's just happened to be a security guard at the corporation where the laptop came from. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened here. Anyway, the corporation sent me a postage paid box to pack up the laptop in and I sent it back to them. Needless to say, my ex-wife's "friend" no longer works at that company.
The really sad thing is that no legal charges were pressed against him and I fault companies like these for worrying more about public image rather than seeing to it that thieves like this one get their time in jail.
All I can say is that if this is the norm, it seems to me that potentially thousands of laptops like the one I dealt with are stolen probably on a weekly basis but you never hear about them. First, because people are not being honest like I was and questioned a high end laptop acquisition for a cheap price and are unwilling to do the right thing and second, corporations are silent on the full extent of the problem.
I never got past the initial splash screen on the stolen laptop because it required a password to do so so I cannot say whether any confidential data was on it or not but the point here is that for every report of a stolen laptop with SS numbers or CC numbers on them, you can bet your bottom dollar that there are potentially hundreds out there that you never hear about.
Just my 2? worth . . .
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