I've been robbed
Well, I didn’t think I’d be robbed in one of the safest countries in the world, Portugal. But thanks to my carelessness and some guy’s bad character, I lost a backpack with two laptops, my wallet, some documents and other items from my work.
I was moving apartments with a friend. We had to make three trips with a mini-van, taking the furniture first and then small items (bags and boxes). On this third and final trip, I noticed that I hadn’t seen my work bag, but I didn’t worry because I thought it might be in the old apartment (since some things had been left there). When I got back, I didn’t even think to look, but it wasn’t there. After about two hours, I received a notification from my bank about a purchase of 40 euros. This surprised me, as I don’t usually make purchases in euros on my Brazilian card, especially such expensive ones. Then I just had to connect the dots. I couldn’t remember where my backpack was and my wallet was there. I realised that if someone was using my card, they had stolen my backpack.
The rest of the story isn’t important. When exactly was I robbed? I’m not sure. I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t careful enough. Sometimes we leave items on the first floor or inside the mini-van without locking the doors, meaning that anyone from the street could just take them from the mini-van or enter the building and take them from the first floor. It could have been neighbours, it could have been people on the street (since we spent the whole day moving, it was noticeable, it wasn’t hard to take advantage of 2 distracted boys). It could also have been not in the street of our old apartment, but of the new one.
Anyway, be careful when moving. Although Portugal is a safe country, Porto is a dangerous city and there are scoundrels on the streets. But I didn’t feel bad about losing the things I lost. What did upset me was losing my passport, because it’s a pain to get it back. I lost some money, yes, but that will come back. Pretty much everything I use for work was there, including my company computer. The problem was that there was also my newly acquired Macbook, which I even wrote a post about.
One thing I realised about being robbed is that my data on the Macbook was very secure. There were several security measures in place on the company computer, as well as no personal data. But the Mac gave me a very good feeling of data security, even because I put a very long password. Unfortunately, I didn’t have FindMy activated, so I can’t locate the Macbook. This security made me realize something important. If I had also lost my phone, there would have been a great chance of my data being leaked, of my accounts being accessed, my photos being seen, etc. That’s why I made the decision to buy an iPhone as soon as possible. I don’t trust the security of my current Poco X3 Pro, I’ll only use it to take photos or have extra battery, things like that. I plan to buy a re-conditioned iPhone SE 2020 as soon as possible.
I sold my gamer laptop (which, thank God, was separated) and, for 100 euros more, I bought another used Macbook. The same model, but white instead of grey, which I didn’t like very much. This time, I ignored my freedom and activated FindMy. My strategy for finding it if it’s stolen, apart from FindMy, is to scratch the casing a lot and then put those covers over it. That way, my Mac will have my “signatures” and it will still be beautiful, but if it happens to be stolen and placed in online marketplaces, I’ll be able to recognise it by the marks. Maybe I’m exaggerating or maybe this isn’t the smartest decision, but it won’t cost me anything, apart from the Mac cover, which I already intended to buy anyway. It’s just that the DBrand ones are very nice:
I wanted to write this post to show you what an excellent laptop I consider the Macbook to be. Two months of use was enough to make me sell my gamer laptop and buy another Macbook, even if it was used. Of course, I didn’t intend to “change” Macbooks so quickly, but due to the event…