Avrohom Eliezer Friedman got his car stolen the other day. Which is pretty damn terrible. But! Police found the carjacker on the road thanks to Gmail. Well, kinda. It’s not exactly the Gmail we love and use.
The thing is Friedman’s car (which he admitted to be a piece of shit) had a customised licence plate: GMAIL. A cop saw that car on the road and presumably wanted to see what kind of weirdo would have that sort of licence plate, and when he punched it in he discovered the car was stolen. He pulled the car over and returned it to its rightful owner.
I guess the lesson of the day is to come up with a weird licence plate though I’m not sure if AOLMAIL or HOTMAIL is as effective. Maybe something like STOLEN or CHKMYPLT would drive home the point more. [ZDNET]