Mac Security · FileVault & Mac Data Protection · Lesson 5 of 5

Challenge: The MacBook in the Taxi

Help Priya when her MacBook rides off in a taxi without her.

The call from the airport

Your friend Priya calls from the airport. She sounds shaken. Her MacBook Air was in the back seat of a taxi, and the taxi has driven off.

She closed the lid before the ride, so it went to sleep. Last month you helped her set it up. Together you turned on FileVault and chose her iCloud account as the way back in. You also checked that Find My Mac was on.

She has her iPhone with her. She wants to do something right now, but she isn't sure what. Her first idea is to erase the Mac straight away, "just to be safe".

You ask her to slow down. There is a better order, and her settings have bought her some time.

Marking it lost

Priya opens the Find My app. The map shows her Mac at the taxi company's depot across town. The company's phone line is busy.

To be safe, she chooses Mark as Lost. She types a message: "This MacBook is lost. Please call" and her number.

Her MacBook Air has Apple silicon. She asks you what will unlock it now, since she didn't make up a new passcode.

Can anyone read her files

While she waits, Priya worries. Her tax papers and family photos are on that Mac. Could a stranger in the taxi open them?

You go through it with her. The Mac was asleep with the lid closed, so the lock screen guards it. It now needs her Apple Account password because it is marked as lost. If the battery runs out or it restarts, the disk is fully scrambled until someone types the password. Touch ID won't help a finder either.

Two days later

Two days pass. The taxi company says nobody turned in a laptop. The Mac is no longer at the depot, and the map shows it in a part of town Priya doesn't know.

She doesn't go there herself. She reports it to the police, with the serial number from her account page. Then she decides to erase it. She has a Time Machine backup, so her files aren't lost.

After the erase, a friend tells her to remove the old Mac from her account, "to tidy up". You suggest she leaves it there.