At the European Association for Archaeologists this year, our rented flat was broken into and a lot…a LOT of stuff was stolen, from me and the other archaeologists we were staying with. We’re still sorting everything out with the police, Airbnb, and insurance, but I thought I’d document a few things that I’ve learned.
I had Prey and Find My Iphone installed on my Macbook pro, ipad and iphone. While I will install them again on my new equipment, they are not much good against savvy thieves. We actually were able to get a better estimate of when the flat was broken into by the email message I got saying that my Apple ID had been hacked and Find My iPhone de-installed. Prey still lists my Macbook pro as missing and it’s never surfaced on Find My iPhone either. Regardless, I still recommend using these programs, and make sure to follow the directions for set-up–an open guest account and a locked-down main account.
I registered what I could on the Stolen Apple Computers list on mark-up.com.
It appears that I’ll be able to track the EXIF data from the stolen Nikon D800 on Stolen Camera Finder or CameraTrace. I can’t find any of my existing online photos taken with the camera, but that may be because Adobe Lightroom strips EXIF when converting from RAW to JPGs. tsk tsk, but this may mean I might find it later. Though getting the police to do anything about it may be a whole different thing.
It could have gone a lot worse–a fellow delegate was injured when a thief came through her window. None of us were injured and we mostly had insurance and had our data backed up. We had saintly friends in Istanbul–buy Veysel Apaydin and Gunes Duru a drink for me if you see them, they stayed with us until 4AM at the police station, and Veysel helped out translating the next day.
Have any other pro-tips for security or tracking lost equipment?
Colleen Morgan 
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