Theft

[K9 Kai Niggemann]

Hi Guss,

Yesterday I was in Berlin, supposed to perform Ohrpilot's "Tage Der Flut" at a theater in. Kreuzberg that opened last Friday.

Unfortunately during our loading in and set up of lights and stage, someone snuck into the dressing room and stole my entire backpack, containing not only my computer (MacBook pro), my iPad, zoom H4n, digital camera, sunglasses, an ultrasoundscanner, an old Walkman, and my entire wallet with credit and other cards, but on that computer the entire setup needed to perform at all - Ableton live set, max patches, etc.

I discovered what really happened when I couldn't find the backpack at some point and used the app "find my iPhone" to see if my iPad was even in the building.

I discovered that it was actually riding the berlin S-Bahn...

I called the police and two guys that reminded me of Carver and Herc from The Wire ( Berlin cops actually wear Kevlar vests all the time) drove around with me, trying to find my iPad.

Incredibly enough we actually found it, after a while, the person who had it dropped it on an empty lot at the end of some alley. I activated the sound function after I was very very close and the iPad hadn't been moving for a while and could hear my ipad beeping behind the fence. Unfortunately they had taken it out of my backpack, (with power supply and cable), so the rest remains lost and we couldn't play after all, which bummed me out a lot. The author of the book we are sonifying was there, very eager to hear what we have done to his book, but it didn't happen.

It looks good that I will get back my stuff from the theater's insurance, I have my backup at home so I hope that I will be able to play the same show in the same place on Thursday as booked, but missing the show last night was really a major downer...

I wish I had installed "hidden" or something like that, but unfortunately I didn't. The password wasn't active, but import and stuff (like financial infos) are on an encrypted disk image, so I hope that not too much damage will follow. I also have a password vault program which I hope is secure enough that they can't get to my data that way. Most of my Numbers (excel) files have passwords, but many of them are in the mac's keychain--I wasn' expecting an attack from there...

I have spend over three hours on my iPad changing passwords for apps that have it saved in the app, like skype, dropbox (you need to unlink a stolen computer, I learned today, since the password is synced over to all machines connected to your account), facebook, all my mail accounts, me.com syncing and much much more...

So besides an urge to tell the story to make the loss less painful, I'd like to ask around what is your preparation for a stolen computer?

My next machine will have:

Firmware password
Encrypted disk image for a lot more things
Password question after 15 minutes of sleep


What else should I have?
What Would a Unicorn Do?

Kai



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