Theft

[Tony Scharf]

Kai:

This kind of thing is always heartbreaking to hear about.  It seems to
be happening with greater frequency, too.  A friend of mine in LA
recently had his entire MIDI drum rig stolen before a gig.  The
insurance was denied because he didn't derive at least 50% of his
income from music, and was therefor considered non-professional (this
after he had been paying the policy for years).   Musicians in the US
aren't covered by the venues insurance for lost or stolen property.
Fortunately, the most I have ever had taken was a keyboard stand
before a gig, and we managed to get by with a borrowed one (why would
anyone steel a keyboard stand, with laptops and a $3000 Korg M3
sitting right next to it?).

Because of this, I have actually thought a lot about the theft of my
rig and changed it significantly because of it.  The guidelines I have
come up with are:

1.  Take as little as possible, and get by with as much that is cheap
and easily replaced.
2.  Dont let anything you cant easily replace (i.e. a laptop) out of
your site until its setup on stage, and then don't take your eyes off
the stage.
3.  Strip your laptop for music down to bare metal as much as
possible.  If you can afford it, have a laptop you only use for stage
shows that only has what you need on it to get through the gig.
4.  Use SugarSync or some other automatic backup system to keep the
laptop data synchronized and backed up as much as possible.
5.  If 3 is impossible, harden it like you would a server.  Hard
passwords everywhere, encrypted file system, etc.   If they have your
info, at least make it hard for them to actually get to and use.

Tony


On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 4:40 PM, K9 Kai Niggemann <kai at kainiggemann.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
> Sent from my mobile device
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> music-bar at lists.music-bar.org
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>



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