The stolen laptop sent its owner a hopeful message just hours after it had been spirited out of his Minneapolis home. The message included the exact spot where the laptop had been taken and, conveniently, a photo covertly shot by the MacBook’s webcam of the man now using the computer.

Anti-theft software on the laptop kicked into gear when the owner reported his computer stolen. Now the police would simply go get it back, thought the man, a Web developer.

Instead, he watched online as his laptop traveled from apartment to apartment in the Minneapolis area, then finally to the University of Ghana, in Africa. It sent photos and locations at every stop along the way.

In an age of ever-sophisticated technology, it’s possible for laptops, iPhones and other devices to reach back to their owners after they’ve been stolen with GPS coordinates, photos and links to help the owner save their information, if not the device.

Yet, in the real world, where real police officers want hard evidence, it doesn’t always work out that neatly. Some victims find justice, others frustration.

Conor Smith’s iPhone was swiped Feb. 6 from a bathroom at the University of Minnesota. Using the device’s built-in anti-theft features, he located it at a St. Paul address. He submitted a report with the Minneapolis police on the department’s website but never heard back from anyone. He called the St. Paul police, but they said it was a Minneapolis case.

A police spokesman said someone in Smith’s position should go to the neighborhood where they’re getting reports of their phone or laptop and then call 911.

The police have recovered phones this way recently, said Sgt. William Palmer. Charges usually don’t get filed, he added. “They couldn’t prove who stole it or anything,” he said.

So what if the homeowner doesn’t confess, or doesn’t allow the officers to search the house?

A search warrant based on the iPhone or laptop’s reports isn’t out of the question, said Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Pat Diamond. A warrant would require that the phone send a fairly specific location of its whereabouts, not an entire city block, he said.

Not everyone waits for a warrant. Search the Internet and it’s not long before you find cases like the man in Los Angeles who tracked his stolen iPhone to an apartment building, then sent messages to the phone that made it set off an alarm as he strolled the building’s hallway listening for it. A short confrontation with the thief later, he had his iPhone back.

In another case, a New Jersey man thought his iPhone had been stolen and used his son’s phone to trace his own.Thinking he was near his phone, he saw a man standing on the street talking on an iPhone and confronted him, eventually knocking him to the ground and punching him. It turned the man was an innocent bystander. The case led to criminal charges against the puncher.

In Minneapolis, Melissa Slough did some of her own detective work when her iPhone was stolen from a bar bathroom Nov. 27, but she called in the police when she got near her target.

Soon two Minneapolis officers were knocking on doors in the Minneapolis neighborhood that her iPhone was listing as its location. Their search came up empty, but a day or two later the phone sent out a new location. She was on her way when a police officer called her to say someone had anonymously turned in the phone.

But this case laptop that was sending its owner locations and photos didn’t end as well. According to the owner, Minneapolis police looked over the photos and eventually told him they weren’t clear enough to get a warrant.

Days after it was stolen, the laptop sent a new location, and it also sent a photo of another man typing at its keyboard along with a screen shot of a Hotmail account belonging to someone named Eric Yankson.

Eric Yankson, contacted through his Hotmail address, agreed that he lived at the apartment complex, and, upon meeting with a reporter, identified himself as the man photographed by the computer. He also said he had recently sent a laptop to his son, a medical student at the University of Ghana.

Yet he insisted that he never had a stolen computer.

The laptop owner, meanwhile, got another photo in his e-mail inbox.

This one was from Ghana, and it appeared to show a young African man as he peered into the laptop’s screen.

Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.

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