Feb. 07--A shaken Jamaica Plain graduate student said a cutting-edge security software program called "Prey" turned him into a cybersleuth allowing him to rescue his stolen MacBook Air in a gadget-guarding trend police admit is going viral.
"It was essential," Scott Roche, 29, of Jamaica Plain, said of the software. "It would have been impossible to trace this stuff without it."
Roche told the Herald he tracked his trusty laptop yesterday to a Brighton business.
"I was able to figure it out using the software," Roche said. "I contacted detectives and they took immediate action," calling the store and asking employees to hold the computer.
Boston police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said detectives know the location of the computer, but said no arrests have been made yet. She added the embedded software is helping cops solve stolen electronics cases across the city.
The find comes less than a week after Roche was mugged on St. John Street in Jamaica Plain as he talked on a cell phone to his mother. That's when his laptop and cell phone were lifted.
It was the second cell phone ripped away from Roche since November, when he was also robbed on the street. That's when he installed "Prey," a free program that allows owners to remotely activate tracking devices on a wide variety of smartphones and computers.
Within hours of being robbed last Wednesday, "Prey" took a photo using the laptop's camera of a man in possession of the device and tracked it to Roxbury.
The man, who Roche says was not the person who robbed him, had several identifiable tattoos on his chest -- including the text of John 3:16 tattooed on his chest.
"I wasn't expecting anything, so I was really surprised," Roche said. "I was excited."
"It works because thieves aren't expecting it. It'll catch 98 percent of street criminals," said Eric Herot, 30, Roche's computer analyst friend who first told him about "Prey."
Josh Bob, 32, of Brookline, recovered his laptop using similar technology after it was stolen from his parked car in Fenway two years ago.
"I saw the suspected thief and his father on video," he said. "It was very, very unreal."
But some say not so fast.
"I could definitely see it being misused," said Bryce Patingre, 26, as he walked near the robbery scene. "Let's say you took that computer and placed it somewhere and you activate that device from afar, you'd be crossing an ethical line by using that inappropriately."
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