Ultimately, the same sort of self-help Mark has used for recovery could be used by criminals for identity-theft against others.
How? Preload a cheap laptop with software to let you monitor it. (This could be made way more sophisticated, and hard to eradicate, than a online backup subscription.) Leave it somewhere to be stolen. Monitor its later use for information that could allow stealing many times the initial laptop value from its later users. (Those later users may in some instances be the laptop thief, but could more often be others who thought they were buying a cheap used laptop.)
This is a good reason to beware deals that seem too good to be true, when purchasing used computer goods.
If you sold a bunch of laptops like this, and every buyer gets their bank/credit compromised, you'd be found.
Allowing them to distribute via theft gives superior untraceability at scale, though it means the people receiving the laptops might not be as 'fat' targets as people who buy laptops through traceable transactions.
Actually, I think this describes the business model behind many of the software products that are pre-loaded onto laptops before they're sold. I.e. bloatware.
How? Preload a cheap laptop with software to let you monitor it. (This could be made way more sophisticated, and hard to eradicate, than a online backup subscription.) Leave it somewhere to be stolen. Monitor its later use for information that could allow stealing many times the initial laptop value from its later users. (Those later users may in some instances be the laptop thief, but could more often be others who thought they were buying a cheap used laptop.)
This is a good reason to beware deals that seem too good to be true, when purchasing used computer goods.