Stolen Laptop Alarms

torok writes "Three Engineering students from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC, Canada have developed a laptop alarm complete with remote pager that detects if your laptop is being moved and sounds an alarm. The article is a bit sketchy on details, but it sounds like a cool idea."

Comments

Damn laptop alarms

[Anonymous Coward]

Like car alarms, I'm sure that laptop alarms will prove to be an important tool in the war on theft... not. This is going to be annoying as hell.

Re:Damn laptop alarms

[nial-in-a-box]

Projections and claims of low false alarms are most assuredly false themselves. Pretty much everything any product developer/manufacturer says is an exaggeration. We all know this.

Re:Damn laptop alarms

[daveo0331]

I disagree that loud laptop alarms won't be effective because they're unnoticed -- after all, the places they'd be used would most likely be study areas or libraries, which are typically very quiet

Unfortunately, a lot of laptop theft happens in really noisy places like airports and train stations. If one of these goes off in the terminal at O'Hare or LAX, it will get ignored. I agree it would be useful at the library though.

Re:Damn laptop alarms

[geoffspear]

Yeah, but after the TSA shoots the thief and then blows up your laptop just to be safe, you're still out a laptop.

Re:Damn laptop alarms

[daveo0331]

But on the plus side, that's one less laptop thief, and your data hasn't been stolen. Big companies tend to worry a lot more about people stealing confidential data than they do about having to pay to replace hardware.

What it doesn't do

[mgv]

Remote tracking

Its one thing to know that your laptop is being stolen, and another to be able to track it down.

Something with a GPS would be more useful.

Michael

Re:What it doesn't do

[The Snowman]

My boss had his work laptop stolen. Someone broke into his car while on a business trip, left the CDs, DVDs, etc. and took the computer. Despite calling to various pawn shops and computer shops, it has not turned up. It probably never will.

You are correct: an alarm is useless. If you are in a mall or store and your car alarm goes off, will you notice? Doubtful. But if your car had GPS, the police could track it down and recover it. Same with laptops.

Of course, we do not need Big Brother looking out for us, so any such system needs to have privacy measures built in, to include requiring consent of the owner (with some form of ID and proof of ownership) or a warrant from a judge to back it up.

Re:What it doesn't do

[nial-in-a-box]

Well a GPS is nice, but a GPS is not a homing device in and of itself. GPS devices recieve, they do not transmit. The only reason that services like OnStar work is by integrating a [analog] cell phone into the system somehow. If this was external, it would be simply to sever it from the laptop. If this device was internalized, laptops would have to increase noticeably in size and weight. Though this would be cool, it would involve monthly/yearly fees as well as weight and power tradeoffs. Most laptop users wouldn't want those tradeoffs. I know I wouldn't. If can simply not be lazy and put the damned thing in standby and bring it with you when it needs to be out of eyesight, it will never have the chance of being stolen. Cool, huh?

Re:What it doesn't do

[nodwick]

Yeah, that was my first thought too. What's stopping them from adding that? One word: cost.

Your typical motion sensor lock runs for $50 list, probably less on the street. Add an entry-level GPS receiver, retailing for around $120. Toss in extra money to support a transceiver that broadcasts the notebook's position (remember, the GPS unit by itself just lets the notebook know where it is; you have to have some way for it to send that location to you), tamper-proofing/camoflage (how good's your GPS receiver if the thief just snaps off your antenna?), monthly charges for monitoring and a call center, and you're probably looking at $400 or more plus subscription. That might be peanuts for a car of $20,000+, but on your $1000 laptop, that's a significant chunk of change.

Re:What it doesn't do

[jhunsake]

your car alarm goes off, will you notice?

No, and no one else will either. Alarms going off has become so prevalent in our society that most people ignore them. When was the last time you saw someone concerned about a car alarm going off? I live in a college town and everyone ignores fire alarms because they are falsely triggered (ie intentionally pulled) all the time. I think the only alarms people pay attention to anymore are the ones we use to wake up. And that's only because they're so damn annoying.

Re:What it doesn't do

[Vexinator]

I think you are overlooking something important:

The loss of the laptop hardware is often peanuts compared to the value of data residing on its hard disk.

Filesystem encryption is a "good thing"...

Re:What it doesn't do

[hondo_san]

OK, so the guy tracked his stolen laptop. I've often thought about a way to run that as a daemon. How about a trojan "periscope" app that talks to headquarters whenever an Internet connection is established, and if the laptop is stolen, the stealee can not only track, but instruct the laptop to eat the cyanide pill.

"Hi, thanks for calling tech support, my name is Larry, how can I help?"

"Yeah, I've got a problem. That stupid laptop theft thingie, well yeah, umm, like I've got this Powerpoint presentation that I have to give tomorrow, and well, like I think I typed the wrong password and the thing said 'no operating sytem found'."

Nevermind...

Re:What it doesn't do

[armando_wall]

If can simply not be lazy and put the damned thing in standby and bring it with you when it needs to be out of eyesight, it will never have the chance of being stolen. Cool, huh?

Yeah, I rememeber that when I was in college, I had an HP48G calculator (not exactly a laptop, but the point is still valid), and I had this policy that went: "If I doubt whether I put the calculator inside my bag, even if I'm 99% sure it is, I'll check anyways". It was annoying to check several times a day, but I never lost it.

Re:What it doesn't do

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to be extremely paranoid nowadays.

So... are you paranoid enough to encrypt all of your sensitive data on the laptop?

Forget the alarms -- my personal anti-theft device

[Txiasaeia]

Is a huge freaking drawing on the top of the laptop. I used to have an old AST with a mushroom cloud and "DO IT!" written on it. You have *no* idea how easy it is to track down something like that. It's possible for a thief to sand down the paint and repaint the whole thing, but I figure it's just easier to get one where such work isn't required.

If a notebook alarm goes off, the computer's already gone, but a custom paint job is easy to track down, given police involvement and photographs. It works for me!

Re:I go to Simon Fraser University

[nial-in-a-box]

How true though. Honestly, do we need another car alarm type of device? I live in a very high density urban setting, and we are plagued with car alarms constantly. As my uncle once put it, they are the most ignored (yet annoying) sound in America. The police only care about them because of the noise. I am willing to wager my life on at least 99% of the actual, real-world car alarm soundings are false alarms of one sort or another. And I'm not just talking about worthless (except for car finding for the inept) panic buttons. We're trying to deal with air pollution, we're looking at light pollution, now let's save our ears with less noise pollution. Please!

Solution that needs a problem

[corian]

The POINT of a laptop is that it is portable; that you can bring it with you wherever you go.
Isn't it your desktop that is more likely to be stolen while you are away than the laptop right there in your messenger bag?

Derivative of a similar car alarm.

[Anonymous Coward]

One can buy an alarm for the car that notifies your pager (with a 1 mile range) that something is amiss with your car. Alarms like this are at least 15 years old.

Let's just face the facts

[iswm]

If people would just pay more attention to their possesions and surroundings there wouldn't be a real big problem with this in the first place. Having an alarm will just give people an even more false sense of security, when inevetably, just like cars, the alarms will do little to stop theives.

Re:Funny story

[The Snowman]

In theory, I know why this could happen, and actually thought it was pretty funny because it was a stupid thing to do. But obviously, there was some sort of "call home" software. Anyone know for sure?

I am curious how, 6-8 years ago, the university could convert an IP address into a physical address and get the campus rent-a-cops at the door in fifteen minutes. Even today it is not easy, especially with dynamic IPs.

Re:Funny story

[The Snowman]

DSL 6-8 years ago?

1996-1998. This is about when I started college the first time, and I distinctly remember DSL beginning to roll in out select areas. It was not nearly as common as it is today, but it existed. So did cable modems. 1996 may be a stretch, but definitely not 1998.

Either way, I am skeptical about a company being able to pinpoint a DSL IP address to a physical address in a few minutes, and call the campus police. At that time this was unheard of. A static IP on a controlled network, yes; a dynamic IP on someone else's network? Doubtful.

Re:Funny story

[The Snowman]

These guys have a bios based application called Computrace Plus. It performs the functions you described above.

Did it perform these functions back in 1996-1998? Looking at their web site I cannot tell for sure when they started up, but the time period the OP is talking about is pre-bubble. Not many tech companies were around back then.

Good idea for cars but...

[Zakabog]

...on a laptop it's really stupid. I have a lojack installed with something VERY similar to this. It's one of the best anti-theft devices I've ever had on any car. I have a little keychain that I keep with my keys and inside the car is a kind of transmitter. If the car is moving and the keychain is not present, lojack will call my cell phone, send me an e-mail (I receive e-mails on my phone) and call my house. I can add more contact methods (text messaging, more phone numbers, like work or something) but these are the easiest ways to contact me.

The good thing about this (and the bad thing about the laptop one) is if I'm using a car, it's going to be on and the keys are gonna be in it so the keychain is gonna be in the car. If I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to park, turn off my car, take the keys out and go to the bathroom. Now if I'm using a laptop, and I want to go to the bathroom, I'm not going to carry the laptop with me (and if I was going to carry the laptop the device becomes completely pointless.)

This device is useless, if you're going to be 15 feet away from your laptop (ok my bedroom is 15 feet across, it's not very far) you should be able to see anyone going near it that's going to attempt to take it. And if they're going to snatch it up while you're that close this little alarm won't help since they're gonna run and not really care who hears the alarm (they could always just smash it off with their foot, I mean it just hangs off the side, it might crack the case of the laptop but who cares they just got a free laptop.)

Re:Good idea for cars but...

[Riggs E.]

...they could always just smash it off with their foot, I mean it just hangs off the side, it might crack the case of the laptop but who cares they just got a free laptop

I would think that trying to fence/resell a laptop with a broken case would be more difficult. At the very least, a thief would only get a couple hundred bucks for the risk.

---

Alarms, GPS, ???

[Riggs E.]

I've read more than a few of the posts degrading this particular technology. But let me ask those folks, how often do you leave your laptop and walk into the next room? I see this "invention" as a first-defense sort of thing. Sure, it would be made better by GPS tracking, blips on a PDA, and even a shiny new decoder ring. These things take time. Lest we not forget the ever-present business model, if this initial configuration takes off, GPS won't be far behind.

Re:Targus Defcon

[dandelion_wine]

Calhouns in Van is a popular place to study, write papers, and whatnot. 24 hour coffee and snacks. But if you're there by yourself, you gonna pack up your laptop when you go to the bathroom? I don't think so. Not going to the bathroom? Well, I be drinkin coffee.

You're right. A lock is necessary, but I wouldn't leave my laptop for 5 minutes simply locked down, nor would I leave it unlocked and alarmed. Shackle it to the table and add the alarm, however, and suddenly I'm in excellent shape if someone wants to try to take it. Added to which, it would kill the nonchalance factor of someone trying to pretend it's theirs, if the place is busy.

There's always a way around security. The question is, if you make it enough trouble, is someone going to bother going after yours?

Re:Why do people steal laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find this hard to believe.

I've dealt with stolen computer equipment. Both with tracking down our own lost equipment and I knew a guy who dealt in stolen laptops.

What happens to stolen computer equipment? Ebay. That's where a lot of it ends up.

Some of it also is sold in person, but never by the person who stole it. The particular guy I knew had a loose network of people with whom he'd trade laptops so the laptops he sold came from the other coast of the US.

In all cases, these guys are usually pretty dumb. The won't even format the machines but that's not because they care about the data, it's because they can't deal with basic driver/software issues. If the machine has a BIOS password on it, it ends up in the dumpster. Software-based "phone home" theft prevention systems are likely quite successful - one of our own machines was tracked down that way, but the software that called home was meant for our own usage auditing, not for tracking stolen equipment.

I really find it hard to believe that someone would try to steal a laptop for the data on it. First of all, you need to know whose machine you're taking and that means trailing someone around for days until the machine is left unattended. This is very unlikely - thieves don't operate like this. If you just grabbed a random laptop and happened to find some MSFT financial reports on it, how exactly would you sell that? Do you call up IBM's corporate espionage hotline from a payphone? I mean, come on, be realistic.

The only way a thief could possibly care about the data on a laptop is if a stolen machine coincidentally happened to lead to some hot investment tip, like an upcoming takeover (or something else that the thief could capitalize on without threat of discovery), but the people that steal laptops don't have accounts with Merryl Lynch, but rather accounts with their drug dealer. If the thief actually had some computer/engineering/financial know-how, he would have a better-paying safer job, but these people don't know how to operate Excel.

It can be tempting to fantasize about a stolen laptop underground with international spies and mob bosses, but these thieves aren't exactly long-term planners. They happen upon an unattended machine and figure it will get them their fix for the week.

Hard disk security

[tronicum]

A laptop is a interesting part to steal as a video projector, a car or a nice watch.

More importent than the fact that you alert yourself "your PC is stolen, wakeup" is that your data is safe and can not be read by the thief.

Hard disc encryption (at least your homedir with your ssh keys, pgp key and other sensitive data) is more importent than a buzzing alert that gets turned off like car alarms....

Actually, if you read the article

[The Tyro]

You'll find that it gives you a five-second window to deactivate before the alarm starts blaring...

Should cut down on the noise pollution "oops, accidently tripped my alarm" incidents.

Besides, it's not like a car alarm that goes off when somebody walks too close to it (or brushes up against your door in the parking lot, or taps your car with a shopping cart, etc). Somebody actually has to pick this up and move it before it sounds the alarm. Personally, if somebody is moving my laptop in my absence, you can bet I'm going to assume the worst and correct their behavior...

Sign me up for one of these babies.