ironman

Last week someone stole my wife's laptop, today i saw her connected in skype, and it turns out it wasn't her but the thief, i talked with him but he refused to give the computer back. Everything i have now is the skype chat (like msn messenger). So i need to know if it is still possible to trace the ip or how can i do it next time if they connect again.
PLEASE HELP, all my wife's work is in there along with many digital photos of our vacations!!!!

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dksuddeth

unless you get the authorities involved, theres really no way for you to get the laptop back nor the information you seek.

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"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

ratbastid

Did you GET an IP address? If so, plug it into an WHOIS at ARIN and see who owns it.

http://www.arin.net/whois/

You can maybe do an nslookup on the IP to find out if there is a domain associated with it. For most commercial ISPs, that's a long-shot, but in some cases you might find a modem or access point name, which would likely have geographical information embedded in it.

One way or another, you'll need the authorities involved. But you could at least hone in on the geographical area to point them toward.

la petite moi

Save that chatlog! What a horrible person. Really, you can only do what dksuddeth said. Call the police and talk to them about the theft, and tell them you have their screenname.

insidious_machinae

It's possible to trace the IP address with "netstat /n" in the command prompt so long as you know all your other connected IP addresses. It only would work if skype runs using direct connections. Using a middleman server means you'll never get the IP address.

fro2020

Can't you contact skype to get this info? Most of these companies are fairly security minded and should be able and willing to assist you with just your wife's account name and a time.

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sailor

Yeah, theres really no way of finding out who it is without getting the authorities involved. You can find out who (company) owns the IP block he was on, telling you what ISP he was using, but the only way to get the ISPs logs of who was using that IP at that time is subpoenaing for it--so you need the authorities involved.

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"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
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Amnesia620

I sincerely hope that you get an IP addresss and that the theif hasn't formatted the hard drive...hopefully, you didn't have any information saved on their - such as passwords, account #'s, etc. Good luck.

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For example, I find that a lot of college girls are barbie doll carbon copies with few differences...Sadly, they're dumb, ditzy, immature, snotty, fake, or they are the gravitational center to orbiting drama. - Amnesia620

Bratwurst

I hope it all works out and you catch this guy.

Next laptop you buy you might want to consider something like this application - some people might not think the cost is necessary or too high, but I am sure in your case you might have wished you had spent the $60 on the personal edition.

This is just an example I found using google. Some of the solutions out there will survive a reformat of the hard drive.

In my last job running an IT shop I had a couple laptops stolen from an office. The way the theft and breakin was done, it was obvious that they were going for certain individuals laptops. I wish then I would have paid for the security of these types of applications because it would have been amazing to catch the people who did it.

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