Thanks Mr Engelby for taking the time to share this with all of us. It is very interesting, and quite simple to implement, thus its beauty!

One comment to other commenters about a thief re-installing the OS: I imagine that most thieves will at least try to turn on a computer to "see what's inside" as soon as they can. And since many many people use auto-login for their accounts (much to our chagrin as IT folks, I know), thieves will often have a fun time looking around to see what pictures, movies, and so on a user has. Then, after the fun wears off, they might re-install the OS or whatever. I suspect many of them wouldn't know how to do even that, frankly. They'd have it up for sale after a quick trashing and deleting of user files. I'd be willing to bet that most computer theives are not terribly Mac-savvy.

Finally, a question for James: Since you say you wrote this after the two school break-ins, has your script been used sucessfully since with any stolen Macs? Just wondering if you have any good stories.

In order to maximise the chance of recovery, you'll have to ensure the thief will actually use the Mac.
If you don't use autologin (for obvious security reason), you might want to enable the guest account on Leopard. So that the thief can use the Mac even without autologin.

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