That's it, I'm disabling "Find my mac". I guess it wouldn't work anyways if a thief is far away from my home or work wifi. So in essence, it's a remote wipe backdoor for when the device is in my possession, and useless if it's stolen.
FileVault2 should take care of the theft problem anyways.
Too bad you can't partially-enable Find my mac for the location service, while disabling the remote wipe and lock services.
Instead of only disabling Find my Mac, please make sure your backups are functional and enabled. That way, if your machine fails or gets wiped (whether it's by you, a thief or someone with your iCloud password), you can still recover everything.
Sure. But should something like this happen, I'd prefer to not waste time having to sit through a complete reinstall before I can start damage control by changing passwords online, etc.
I don't think getting hold of the iCloud password would let anyone "own" my mac. (The only things they should be able to do with that would be messing with my synced address book, notes and photostream - and if "find my mac" was enabled, perform a remote wipe).
Use FileVault 2 and remote wipe is no longer necessary.
On current Macs, a live USB stick might be a better idea than a live CD. Or even better a bootable backup created with Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or SuperDuper.
Think of the trade off: what's the likelihood that you won't be able to find a computer...ANY computer...to login to your accounts...versus the likelihood that someone can compromise the stolen computer's entire HD?
(this is less of an issue if you're encrypting everything)
How would it connect to the iCloud services? The mac doesn't have a built-in 3G connection, so the only way it can go online is through previously-stored wifi associations.
FileVault2 should take care of the theft problem anyways.
Too bad you can't partially-enable Find my mac for the location service, while disabling the remote wipe and lock services.