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My MacBook Pro was recently stolen. I still have remote access via Dropbox and his IP address. I don't have the expertise to run SSH and change the remote login. I'd prefer to use a keylogger.

Could someone show me how to upload the keylogger to the Dropbox? I have the AMAC keylogger but don't know how to manipulate the .exe and upload it and then have it send the info back to me.

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  • 8
    Did you report it to the police and give them the ip address?
    – Moab
    May 10, 2012 at 19:49
  • 4
    How are you planning to run a Windows executable on a MacBook?
    – slhck
    May 10, 2012 at 20:48

4 Answers 4

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No, no, no! No. Instead of mucking about with stuff that could potentially incriminate you, not the thief, call the police and tell them everything you know now. It's their job after all.

Programs like the one you describe are available (I personally use Prey, which is free and does a few nice things), but all those should have been installed before your machine was stolen, and are of no use to you now.

If you use Gmail, you can use the 'Sign out all other sessions' button to lock the thief out of your email, which as kind of like the valet key of your digital life. The button can be found when you click on Details, at the bottom of the Gmail interface.

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  • The police told me "its too much work to locate the IP address" they don't seem to care...I have contacted the ISP but they can't do anything without the police. Therefore, I am looking for more means to acquire info.
    – user133474
    May 10, 2012 at 19:54
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    @user133474 then you call the police back, and you tell them that the ISP will do all the work locating the IP address, but they just need the Police to ask them to. Hell, do it on a three way conversation, so the ISP can hear what they want you to do. Maybe even bring an attorney into this. Or call the local TV station and their Action News department, and have THEM pressure the police.
    – Bon Gart
    May 10, 2012 at 20:01
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Make sure you put the serial of your MBP so Google will index it as "STOLEN" (uppercase, this is somewhat a convention by mac users). Post "<serial> STOLEN" on different forums and sites that are indexed by Google. This can easily be checked then by any potential buyer to see if it's stolen.

Contact Apple. They can set in their database the product as stolen, so they can at least detect if someone comes to them with the stolen product.

You can use https://www.icloud.com to find your MBP, from the Find My iPhone application, if you enabled this feature. You can track the location of the device, when it goes online. This could help you and also the police. If you go with this to the police, it's possible they will do something about it.

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  • Ive found the Mac Address of my computer thanks to the university IT folks this would be more helpful to the police then the IP, right?
    – user133474
    May 11, 2012 at 12:48
  • What MAC Address? For the Wireless or the Ethernet? Anyway, it could help, but only if they want to cooperate with ISPs. MACs might be logged when the laptop acquires an IP through DHCP. So I guess you didn't registered for Find My iPhone... Tough luck then.
    – user127350
    May 11, 2012 at 13:20
  • The mac address for the macbook pro, wireless. What is the difference between ethernet?
    – user133474
    May 15, 2012 at 11:56
  • Ethernet <=> wired. It has different MAC address. If you had this address, I guess the chances of getting trace of it would have been slimmer, as people tend not to use the wired connection.
    – user127350
    May 15, 2012 at 12:17
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Late to the party, but... if memory serves -- which it might not -- Macs run a BSD core with many utilities under the hood. You can use SSH to login to your macbook remotely and run things from the command line.

You might be able to install prey from the command line this way. I would highly recommend reading their documentation.

A savvy thief would have formatted the laptop. This leads me to suspect you're dealing with an opportunist rather than a criminal.

To add to that... you could use dynamic port-forwarding on SSH, then configure a SOCKS5 proxy on your local machine, then use Google Maps or something through that proxy to try to access the location of the host (your laptop). It's what I would try.

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Use Find My Mac! Login to icloud.com and locate the MacBook Pro. Drive to the address where the theif is. Wait outside and call the Police.

When they show up, you talk to them and they nab the guy who stole it.

If you don't have Mountain Lion (maybe Snow Leopard), you can try to launch a 3rd party utility.

The command to open an application is "open" So if you want to launch TextEdit, you need to type "open /Applications/TextEdit.app"

But if anything pops up on the screen, your theif will know you're doing something. He may shut it off OR (format the drive).

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