Laptop tracking software
I know there’s software out there that can tell you the location of a stolen laptop if the person who stole it logs on to the internet.
Just wondering if anyone can recommend anything to go for or if there is any freeware, and if there is freeware will it do the job?
Or are there any other measures one can take to either trace a stolen laptop or render it useless by means of some form of activation from another computer?
Thanks
If you want to render the data useless… you can encrypt the entire drive.
Well the only data on there will be my music really (itunes collection). I’ve got music software like Traktor and Logic that’d be nice to know is unusable should the laptop go astray. But can the music collection be encrypted so that no one can enjoy my many years of hard work building it up? I don’t really have sensitive documents or anything.
And does anyone know about this tracking software at all?
Another thing is, would it be better to get tracking software and not have a password on the laptop? I’m thinking that if there is a password they’d have to reinstall OSX to get around it, which in one way is good as they will not get any of my music or software, but it’ll wipe the tracking software making it pointless to install in the first place. If there is no password they are more likely to go on the internet meaning a better chance in me tracking it down.
If you lose physical security (i.e. the laptop is stolen), it won’t be to overly difficult to get the data off, password or not (I have some recovery CDs that can hack just about any password). So pretty much unless your whole drive is encrypted (which would in fact encrypt your music as well), with enough know how, someone can get to your data.
Did a google search, found this lojack type software… Leader in Data and Device Protection - Absolute Home & Office
But I have never used… the clients I have have always opted for encryption.
Mate its too easy to get around a Mac password lockout. Just google it and you will see. Just keep it safe and with you.
Yeah. By the time the crack head that nicked it has bought his rocks the damn thing will have been sold and the HD swapped and then sold on again.
Get insurance.
Funny thing is that when I read this, I was in the physical security section of ethical hacking course
http://www.computersecurity.com/laptop-tracking/index.html?id=1
I can’t vouch for any of these, but they should all be available
Cool, thanks for your help. On the encryption thing; If I were to encrypt my data (so basically my music), is there a possibility of anything conflicting with Traktor or itunes etc? The last thing I want is something that could potentially fuck up a set. Also, I take it the rest of the laptop would be usable right? Meaning if it was stolen the thief could still log on to the internet so I could potentially track it down? If this is the case I’m struggling to see how they wouldn’t be able to access my music if there encryption on it. I’ve had a look at the link you sent but how would they not able to get to my music?
I also obviously did a search prior to posting this and this is what I found. Thought I’d share it to help prevent anyone not being protected in some way.
http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/index.html (Freeware)
And I’m not sure if this is a British only thing but wouldn’t hurt to register any valuables (not only laptops)
@ Sarasin; that goes without saying mate.
@ Karlos; It’s covered by contents insurance but if it were to get stolen the likelihood’s are it’ll be by just as you said, some crack head looking to sell it on. They will more than likely not be tech savvy and won’t go about replacing the hard drive and they will also be likely to turn it on and check it all out, maybe do a bit of web surfing before offloading it. It’s not about the laptop, it’s about hopefully finding out where they live and kicking the door in and putting a knife to their throat (or being sensible and getting the police to kick their door in)! I’d sooner be as protected as possible if the option is there. That software I found above can actually take pictures using the built in isight camera. Nice.
The encryption software encrypts the entire drive… when you boot the computer, you are prompted to enter your password (encryption key), then the OS starts loading. If the thief doesn’t know the password, the OS will not even boot. The other benefit of course, is that if they take the hard drive out, connect it to another computer, they are still unable to access anything on the drive.
I don’t believe you would see any conflicts… as it at the file level… when I have used it in the past, I haven’t had any issues with anything conflicting… but then again, I haven’t tried it in this scenario.
The tracking software wouldn’t really do you much good though if you went with the entire disc encryption, as the tracking software wouldn’t be able to load, as the thief wouldn’t be able to even get to the OS.
Precisely. So would there be a way to only encrypt certain things? So for example my music file. Like maybe if they tried to boot itunes or Traktor it asks for a password. Or if they went into the root folder it asks for a password. Yet if they can go into firefox as there isn’t a password on it. A custom encryption basically?
Ahh… I got ya. I think the only way to do that effectively would be to configure your computer with two partitions or two physical drives. Put all of your music on you secondary drive (i.e. then one without the OS), and everything else you wanted to keep secure… and then work to encrypt that drive.
To do that you would need software that runs on the OS level (so after the OS is up and running)… however you would really need to test this out, I am sure there would be overhead on the OS, and you very well could run into some conflicts/performance issues.
Something like this I guess…
Cool man thanks, although it seems like it’s getting very complex. It’d be cool if you could encrypt certain files within a hard drive. But no worries man. I’ll stick to the tracking software. They should invent something that when activated by the user on a secondary laptop means that who ever turns on the stolen laptop has it blow up in their face with all that blue paint like in bank bags, you know the ones you see in the movies?
So concealed under the keyboard is a bag containing that dye shit, when activated BOOM!!.. Motherfucker’s got shit backfired right in their fucking face with a useless laptop!!
LMAO!!! We should invent it!
Was thinking exactly that! Shouldn’t really be too hard. Kinda working on a car airbag principal (they manage to pack those things so small) except with paint in it. Could even go one step further and put microdots in the paint. Basically microscopic dots containing information on the laptop (owner etc). So if the police see someone walking down the street with blue ink on their face they can look at it under a microscope and inform the laptop owner that yes, their laptop is fucked, but have no fear, the criminal has been caught and currently has blue dye all over him/her.
personally i’d back up all my stuff on an external, and hide it away in a closet (or bank)..i don’t know if i could stand losing my entire music collection.
Already done that. What I mean is I have some real gems on my laptop. Shit I have had to search high and low for. Shit I have had to email the artist to get hold of it, and a couple of the cases the artist has actually done re edits for me, or re EQ’d it for club use so I’m pretty much the only one that has it. I’d hate some punk ass bitch to have the pleasure of owning that shit!
can’t you ping the mac (physical) address of the network cards to find it?
i know there’s a command in windows for tracing (roughly) where an ip is coming from, not tried it with mac addresses though.
have you got any other computers? can’t see it being too difficult to set something up to just ping the laptop from another computer if pinging a mac address works?
something i will experiment with in the morning. despite being on windows, but now i’m curious
I am pretty sure the MAC address is only going to work for things that are directly connected to you… I don’t think you can ping MAC addresses across multiple WAN links.
Even if you could ping the MAC address, you really wouldn’t know where that address is… you could do a traceroute on the IP address, but again that is only going to give you general location (ISP name, maybe location depending on how they label their routers)… not enough to go on if you are looking to knock some teeth out of a thief! : )
Another tracker
Hiding your stuff
http://www.winability.com/folderguard/
U can select drives and folders to be hidden and encrytped with some of those.
A USB encryption key is another option.
Booby trapping the PC and installing your own Trojans and things incase it gets stolen are a dangerous game, there’s always the possibility of it going horribly wrong lol
install a gps card into the laptop? just googled and found a bunch. then find some sort of software/app that allows you to trace it that way?