A guy who runs SETI@home on a bunch of his computers used it to locate and recover his wife’s stolen laptop! The SETI client application sends its results to the main database every few days, and then downloads new work to do. Well, when this connection happens, the SETI database logs the client’s IP address. After his wife’s laptop was stolen, James Melin repeatedly checked his SETI page to see if the laptop was checking in. Sure enough, whoever stole it didn’t bother to reinstall anything, and just hooked it right up to the Internet. His IP address was logged and provided to the police, who then subpoenaed the ISP for the physical address of the customer it was assigned to. An excellent use of SETI, if you ask me.
