Using last.fm to catch a thief -- not possible, right?

My car got broken into a few weeks ago and my laptop was stolen. I just noticed that the thief has been listening to a bunch of my music though -- it's all being scrobbled on last.fm. There wouldn't be any way to track where this is coming from, right? Using an IP address or something? I don't know anything about computers and I have a feeling this is impossible, but I figured it was worth a shot.

woah, that is some crazy stuff going on there.

ooh, it's gotta be possible. awesome, even. first things first: you filed a police report, yeah? (i figure if you're going to get an IP out of last.fm, that'd be the first step)

WOW, smart thinking. I hope you find this person.

report him to the RIAA while you're at it.

lol entire thread. please post what's he's listening too so we can psycho-analyse him.

(thief has sold the laptop prolly not him)

paging tombot

contact 411

Telephone and Post

London Office: +44 (0) 20 7780 7080

Last.fm Ltd.
Karen House
1–11 Baches Street
London, UK
N1 6DL

maybe the thief is posting to ilx as well

Last.fm will ask you for the crime reference number.

It's totally possible -- the problem is more getting anyone, police-wise, to consider it high-priority enough to go to the legal trouble. Like, getting the police who deal with the break-in to interface with the ones who can do this work, and then the legal issues of getting an IP from last.fm and tracing it through the person's ISP, etc. Probably hard to get happening for a smallish theft, priority-wise.

But you should totally alert them that this is the case, though! There's no harm registering it. And if you're in any way insured w/r/t this theft, they might care, too. Contact last.fm and see what their policies are about this sort of thing. Maybe police will be way more helpful at this than I'm imagining, if you tell them last.fm is basically working as a lo-jack system, and last.fm has a policy for working with them. Maybe there's been a rash of car break-ins around you and it's actually something they care about. Who knows -- definitely no harm in trying, or at the very least getting it down for the record.

That's gotta suck, though, to watch whoever stole your stuff going through it -- sorry!

I mean I shouldn't even say "probably hard to get happening," what do I know -- obviously there's a chance it just won't be a priority for them and their resources, but who knows, maybe you'll deal with someone who'd find it super fun and exciting to catch a thief via last.fm.

(This also surely happens enough that last.fm would have a good policy in terms of working with law enforcement.)

If you have already reported it to the Police, if you update them telling them you have a line of enquiry they will probably follow it up with Last.fm. Only problem is that these sort of investigations might take a while for all the necessary paperwork to be filled out, so I wouldn't expect it to be resolved anytime soon. I also don't know what sort of data Last.fm hold, and if it would be able to pinpoint a physical location. But worth a go, anyway.

It's always worth doing the reporting work, twice now I have had bikes returned by the cops after they were stolen, the first one came back after almost a year. And you will need a case number to proceed with e.g. last.fm.

1 - report it, report it, report it
2 - the right detective would be psyched to follow this up

TH is otm. be persistent/annoying enough, and the right person will be interested in tracking the thief down even if only for the exercise