Who knows legal-stuff. Trying to track down stolen laptop.

If you/someone can receive an e-mail, RIGHT click on the e-mail, select Message Options and cut and paste the entire Internet Header information. It will provide all the info you need IP addresses, etc.

Use WHOIS to check the IP and contact them directly, the IP folks are pretty good about stuff like this.

Bahamutchild said:

Okay, suppose to be studying but mom just called.

Here's the story- her laptop was stolen by someone- presumably in her neighborhoood- while she was out for a walk. They walked in, took only the laptop, and walked out. Now they might have sold it or whatever, but the idiots haven't reformatted it.

Whenever they come on the internet, Skype (internet chat/phone) comes on and her old alias comes on for all the world to see (and everyone who had her old alias on their contact list does see).

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This reminds me of something I heard on Kim Komando's show, there's a small program you can get/buy/whatever you can put on a laptop, and whenever it accesses the internet, the program 'checks in' at a site that records the IP address, and with your password you can go to to the site and see the date and time of all the IP addresses the computer has "phoned home" from. But that doesn't help you here...

Bahamutchild said:

My mom tried to get skype to give up the IP addie but they said 'sorry, have the police contact us.' So the police contacted them and they said 'Sorry, we can't give you the IP addie'

What a load of... Hello, it is HER computer! Her alias!

So now I'm guessing she needs a court order to get Skype to hand over the IP in order to track down the thief. Anyone wanna explain the legal steps we need to take?

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Yes, exactly, it usually takes a court order to get that info from most any company. I'd call the police, call a judge, call the District Attorney, call the mayor, call your Senator... you "shouldn't have to" actually hire a lawyer to get this done, but you may have to, and that could cost a significant portion of the cost of the laptop. But maybe you can sue the thief in small claims court for the attorney fees...

I'm not a lawyer, this is just the layman stuff I know...

Bahamutchild said:

Hopefully we can sort this before the thief deletes Skype...

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Surely Skype keeps all records, so if the thief sells it to someone else who then gets on the Net, Skype should have records of both the thief's accesses and his customer's accesses. The info incriminating the guilty party is already there at Skype and should stay there for a while, your only problem is getting at it.

And once you have the IP address, it'll tell you the ISP and usually the city, but you may still need another court order to get the ISP to cough up the name and address of the customer at that IP address (and at the date and time of the access).


Hope this helps...

Just a random brain fart here, but would a 'Freedom of Information Request' work?

Around here, you can insist that a company provides you with all the information they have about you ... it is basically a way of getting your credit history, etc.

So if she asks for HER OWN records .. wouldn't that include the IP addresses that were used for each login?

Naturally you'd need someone to co-operate at Skype, but if someone there WANTED to help, this would be a mechanism were they could do that but not be breaking any rules.

Sadly, this seems to be a very common request from Skype, and they don't seem to have any interest in helping ... even when they have all the authorisation they need.

Mac