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After her MacBook was snatched, the woman, known only as Joey from Santa Cruz, logged on to her .Mac account to find that the thief had not wiped the admin account for which Back to My Mac had been enabled.

As the MacBook's new user was ripping DVDs and browsing Limewire

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for illegal software copies, Joey was able to start screen sharing sessions, access her files, remove sensitive data, change passwords and even take pictures of the user using Photo Booth.

Within days she had enough information to identify the new user and passed it on to Santa Cruz police. The latest news is that they were seeking a warrant and hoped to soon be able to make an arrest and return the laptop.

Joey was updating the story on her blog, but the amount of interest seems to have forced that offline for the moment.

It is not the first time that remote access software has been used to find a stolen Mac. In 2002, police recovered a stolen iMac after the owner's brother used the installed Timbuktu software to alter the internet settings and make it easier to locate the new user.