Stolen camera 'phones home' to nab thieves

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Alison DeLauzon lost her digital camera which contained precious photos and videos of her infant son. She thought she lost it forever but then she received photos from the camera through the memory card. The photos contained her son and the thieves, who took the camera and the bag after she left it at the restaurant.

This was made possible by means of “Eye-Fi” wireless card that was reported early January here.

DeLauzon told Reuters: "I opened up the Eye-Fi manager on the computer and, lo and behold, there are the guys that stole our cameras…Not only is it the guy who stole our camera ... but the guy took a picture of (his accomplice) holding our other camera."

One of her relatives gave her a holiday gift, an Eye-Fi, 2GB secure digital memory card for her Canon camera. The Eye-Fi costs $100 but unlike other memory card technologies has the capacity to send captured photos to the computer by means of built-in Wi-Fi option. It can also send photos directly to websites like Flickr and other photo websites.

The culprits luckily were not aware about this Eye-Fi technology. When they passed through an unsecured network, the Eye-Fi card automatically sent the photos to DeLauzon’s home computer.

Similar technologies are being used by other devices. Recently, a built-in camera in a stolen Mac computer sent the photos of the culprits back to the owner, who then reported it to the police.

Also, a Japanese man set up a hidden camera inside his home to catch the thief after food was disappearing from his fridge. A woman was hiding in his closet and she has been living there for almost a year.

GadgetTrak, of Beaverton, Oregon, sells a software that can be loaded onto any of those devices. If a BlackBerry, for example, falls into the wrong hands, the software grabs information from the new user's SIM data card and e-mails it to the rightful owner.

There is also a stolen laptop tracking program that provides the whereabouts of the computer through Google Maps.

With an Apple Mac computer, the software instructs the built-in camera to take video of the thief and sends data the owner, along with information about nearby wireless networks.

DeLauzon didn’t press charges against the employees who stole her camera; she was just happy to receive back the photos of her baby. But the restaurant fired them both.

When we finally got it back, my husband and I spent the night just sitting and watching the videos -- stupid videos, like him feeding himself for the first time or him pulling himself up in his crib for the first time. We sat down one night and just relished it.