Stolen Boom - Can the Logs tell me when?

[Sike]

I had a Squeezebox Boom stolen last Friday. In order to pinpoint who is was with the logs from the locks (they register when and who leaves and comes in) I could pinpoint who took it. Is there a way to check in the logs when the device was last seen? If I could see if it was still there at say 18:00 on Friday and no longer after 19:00 that would be very helpful.

Thanks

Sike

[Mnyb]

Don't unregister it from you own mysqueezebox com account.

And if you go to mysqueezebox.com you can see that the players mac-adress is listed there even if it's not connected .

Figure out it's mac as this is supposed to pretty much unique for every squeezebox.

And contact support about it so they can monitor if anyone else tries to register it ?

If they don't really know what they have they may appear on your account using it , wonder if logitech can trace it's ip while this happens ?

[andyg]

PM me the MAC address.

[Sike]

I found it on mySqueezebox.com and (stupidly) set the alarm to go aff at full blast a minute later. It's offline now but I got a screenshot of the device and the IP it was registered with.

I am not sure if this is enough to go to the police about. If I knew when I went offline last, I could pinpoint it.

I have sent the MAC to andyg ... He has always been 'da man' Let's see what happens.

[drewe181]

Setting the alarm to go off several times early morning could be a lot of fun The Phantom Boom!!
Of course the thief would probably just unplug it but I'm sure the first time may scare the crap out of them.

[Sike]

Unfortunatly he unpluged it and has not pluged it back in again

I have a screenshot of the IP when it was online and will get the police to check it out. I am not sure if the Swiss Providers give out the IP addresses to the police.

[toby10]

In the US there are web sites that give "known" (public) info on IP address'.
This reveals the ISP name, region, sometimes specific city and possibly down to a particular section of that city as assigned by the ISP.
So depending on what the ISP makes public and how they assign their IP's you could see XYZ ISP in NYC, or it may reveal that IP down to a particular corner of NYC.
With such info, at the very least, you can provide the ISP name to the police to at least begin the investigation.

Good luck and keep us posted.

[Mnyb]

Also if Logitech makes it impossible to re-register stolen squeezeboxes.
There value as stolen gods would be less and also if this became a known practice , their resale as shady ebay deals would be very unattractive. Suppose some be happy and don't think to much when seeing a very good deal ?

Enhancement request ! a user identity file somewhere on the newer SqueezeOS players I could of course place a txt file in an obscure place in the file system or fill it in as #comment text in an init script or similar , where no one would look.

[Sike]

So depending on what the ISP makes public and how they assign their IP's you could see XYZ ISP in NYC, or it may reveal that IP down to a particular corner of NYC.
With such info, at the very least, you can provide the ISP name to the police to at least begin the investigation.

Good luck and keep us posted.

The address only shows up as "Bern" and not which corner. I am not sure if the provider even if it was another city in the same kanton (State).

I went to the police today. It took nearly 2 hours and they thought that it would be improbable that Cablecom (The ISP) would tell them who the person is and a court order would not be possible for a petty theft... Time will tell.

[Sike]

The story so far:

15. Jan 2011: The Device was stolen. The thief got it working around 22:00 (Thats when it logged on to mysqueezebox.com for the first time)

18. Jan 2011: I reported it to the police as stolen. It took 2 hours to explain to them how 'cool' it is that I have the IP address of the person who took it. They explained that they probably can't help me because the device 'only' costs CHF 300.- (Around 300$) and it's not worth their time. I made big fuss about them being useless and how much time we have wasted already. They even offered to come to the place it was stolen from and dust for fingerprints... Eventually they understood that an IP address with a timestamp is better.

21. Jan 2011: The Police called to me inform me that they will look up the IP with the provider and it will cost them CHF 250.- (Again 250$) to do this.

26. Jan: 2011: They called me to tell me that they have an address and they will be going around on Monday

08. Feb: 2011: The police called me and informed me that they had recovered my Boom The guy (Who I suspected to begin with) had already sold it on ricardo.ch (eBay type platform for Switzerland) and already had it packaged ready to go, but had not sent it yet. He confessed to stealing it and as he had already sold it online he could not pull the: "I just borrowed it" line.

He will now be formally charged by the police and I can also press charges. I am still on the fence if I should press charges too. The guy is a painter who works for a company I contracted to paint my house while I was on holiday abroad. He had a key and just took it which is pretty bad and he had sold it which is a bit of a character fault, to put it mildly. Giving him a criminal record will probably make his life harder, but I probably will teach him a lesson and hopfully stop him from robbing the next customer.

All in all mysqueezebox.com is a great service! I would never have signed up if it was optional. Not only has it recovered my Boom, but it has restored a little bit of faith in the justice system and given me a good geek-story to tell my fellow geeks. Thanks also to 'andyg' for his help!