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Protecting My Daughter's Notebook?
ctwxman asks: "My daughter enters college in the fall. This past week she spent three days on campus for orientation... and had her iPod stolen! That got me to thinking about protecting her brand new laptop. I'll physically lock it to something immovable -- that's simple. However, I've got a website and it's got a log. Is there a way to make her laptop quietly 'phone home' every time it boots so I can get the IP address and always see where it is? Her machine runs XP, but knowing Slashdot, suggestions for all OSes will be appreciated."
You have a naive daughter (who let her iPod get stolen) and you're worried about her laptop computer? You need to be worried about her other laptop unless you want some worse surprises a few months from now ("Him? That's going to be the father of my grandchild?!?").
Good luck, man.
Signed,
Father of two daughters approaching college faster than he wants to admit.
I am a
how about protecting your daugjter? you know, there are a lot of bad people at the universities. D:
You can't prevent theft, and you might not be able to track it down.
But, you *can* get a rider on your insurance that will cover theft of the laptop.
That, and backups of whatever term paper she's currently working on kept in a separate place, is what you need.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
uh, you want your daughter's laptop to "phone home". Are you not just a jealous dad?
What does she want it for? Could she, for example, make do with a low-spec laptop worth a few hundred currency units of your choice, rigged up as a thin terminal to a higher-spec but secure machine somewhere else? This would be ideal for doing actual work; small and portable at the human end, large and capable (and backed up) at the machine end.
This way, the human end is undesireable and unlikely to be stolen. And if it is stolen, it's cheap to replace and all documents will be preserved.
.\.\att Clare
It should be fairly trivial if you can program. You can even get a free perl interpreter (ActivePerl or something) if you don't have VisualC++ or somesuch. Put your program in the startup folder, or as a scheduled task.
The simplest would be to make a secret webpage for her and set that as her homepage in IE. Although that is trivial to change, whoever steals it (or buys the stolen thing) will probably boot it up and start IE, hitting your web page.
This is simple but eventually they can hack around it:
1. Set up a subdirectory on your Web page, say "foo.com/google/" that directs to google.com.
2. Set up her homepage as foo.com/google. Don't tell anyone else about foo.com/google.
3. When the thieves boot up the PC and get on the Web, they'll automatically go to foo.com/google and, hopefully, won't even notice the redirect. You'll get at least one hit and maybe more.
The down side is that your daughter will trigger these logs too. (That'll happen with pretty much any technique you use, though.) Promise us that you won't go checking on her surfing times.
A friend of mine had their laptop stolen once, and I saw them come on MSN. I wrote down the IP address, only to find out that it was my friend logging in from their home PC.
In short, if you steal a laptop, you either wipe the hard drive, or bypass the boot process with a CD to snoop around at data.
Get your daughter a proximity alarm, so if she walks away from the laptop, or if it's grabbed from her, a loud alarm sounds.
HI I'm a budding spyware author and I am too uninventive to actually create my own spyware so I was wondering if you slashdot people have any suggestions on how to help track users.
You see what I want to do is quietly create some spyware that will dial back home every time it boots so I can track infected users... Hahah.. I meant to say loyal customers. Heheh... I love saying that...
No No don't worry about giving me suggestions, we'll cook up a crappy excuse to explore spying techniques so you can give a spyware creator suggestions without actually looking like your helping us here at MyPrincessLaptopSecurity.Com
PS: Please visit my web site to bump up the traffic, my ads aren't getting enough hits...
WTF!! Which editor needs to be sacked for this shit? COME ON ALREADY!!! Haven't we suffered through enough Star Wars commericals... errr... stories... Now this shit... TACO FIX YER SHIT!
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
My other suggestion is insurance. It shouldn't cost too much ($50/yr) and it'll cover theft. I had my laptop stolen once, and it was insured, so I replaced it easily. Not only that, it was quite easy to deal with the insurance folks (no horror stories here!).
Besides, even if you know what IP it's coming from, what goes does that do you? Are you going to go vigilante on them? The police aren't likely to care much -- they don't usually give such thefts very high priority.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Teach your daughter to be responsible. I can tell you every laptop stolen in college was someone being irresponsible. They left their dorm rooms unlocked with laptops out on desks not locked to anything. They would leave laptops unattended in the library for a few minutes while they went to get coffee. Nobody is going to steal her laptop out of her hands or out of her backpack while she's wearing it. If your daughter was more responsible with her belongings they wont get stolen. Any tech solution you have to find it after it gets stolen is unecessary if your daughter takes care of her things.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Oh, come on.
.NET tray icon app that installs ~5 ad-ware programs? Sorry, I like elegant solutions.
In six easy steps, why don't you just:
(1)Write a PHP/Perl/WhatTheFuckEver/etcetera script that sends a specially formatted message to a system log.
(2)Install a real operating system (like, say, Ubuntu).
(3)Create a cron job that regularly accesses said script with Curl/wget/WhatTheFuckEver/Etcetera.
(4)???
(5)Profit!
(6)Send another ultra-simple 30-second software engineering question to Ask Slashdot.
What, did you want a >4MB
(sorry, I'm in a bad mood because of MGM v. Grokster)
I talked to my friend at Apple and suggested that they add some software to the iPod and iTunes so that you can require a password whenever you dock the iPod. If you can't supply the password then the iPod locks up and phones home.
He thought it was a good idea, but he's sort of a flake, so who knows if it's something they'd ever do.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Since you asked about something that would phone home I would suggest Timbuktu from Netopia. There was a story a few years ago about how a brother recovered his sister's stolen computer by using its phone home functionality.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
If she's cute, I'm sure that most good-natured slashdotters will gladly look in on her quite often.
Insightful as fuck... Plus Libby is one hot bitch. :)
Ive got a key logger installed on my PC that allows for the log files to be uploaded to an FTP server should I choose it to. I would guess this would allow you a very large amount of data on the would be thieves. Perfect keylogger by blazing tools is the one I use.
She lost the iPod because she wasn't careful. If she can't be responsible with that, I think you've got bigger problems. She might also lose, say, her status as a non-pregnant person.
If you paid for the laptop, and you think there's a large chance she'll allow it to be stolen, don't let her take it! If she paid for it herself, let her learn the painful lesson herself. Either way, I see no need for this tracking software.
Following her around and making sure she never makes a mistake is only going to hurt her, not help her.
..and we have a winner!
.Mac for backups, be virus and spyware free, and get to setup secure guest logins for quick sharing with friends (in sight) without comprising data or security (much).
The best bet is to avoid getting it stolen, not to try to recover it after the fact. If you care, personalize it a lot! Etch her full name into the cover, along with a message saying that it's stolen if not in her posession. Add a URL or phone number for anonymous tips. Maybe mention a reward. Make it value-less to steal.
You can get usable Windows laptops cheap. Just make sure that she has an effective backup solution. It would really suck losing a quarter's worth of homework and notes in the last week or so. She may also want to look into file encryption.
Of course, when it gets stolen, you can get her a Mac -- turn on FileVault, get
There have been well publicized theft recovery stories, a couple years ago, but thieves are learning to bypass those alarms. They avoid wireless networks while looking for incriminating documents, or just wipe/reinstall without booting up normally.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
Seriously. If you don't have a need to worry about appearances (i.e., she's not taking it to corporate meetings), stickers (lots of them) go a long way. Thieves who aren't just stealing it for their own personal use will think twice about stealing anything that is easily identifiable because it would be easy to pick out at a pawn shop, and black-market type folks aren't going to want something that stands out so much. Thieves are generally looking for a quick buck, so they generally aren't going to be interested in scraping all those stickers off, either.
Also, in addition to writing down serial numbers, write down her MAC address (both the ethernet and the wireless if she has both). If it does get stolen, hand them off to the school's computer center. I know of two separate cases where students stole school computers, and were caught within a day the moment they plugged the thing into the network and turned it on. Hopefully they would be willing to do such a thing for your daughter in the event that such a thing happens.
But the single most important thing you can do is make sure that she locks her door and, if she has a ground floor room, keeps the windows closed when she's out. A lot of people I knew at college thought they didn't need to because folks around the dorm would keep an eye on things or something like that, but it just isn't true. There were several cases at my school (which only had 1,100 students) where someone from outside the college just walked into the dorms while classes were in session, tried doors, and walked out with the expensive stuff from the rooms with unlocked doors. If they walked in on someone, they would just make an excuse to the effect of, "Sorry, wrong room." And act like they were visiting someone and don't really know their way around very well yet.
And it's not exactly related to electronics, but, if she uses a purse, get her to quit. Otherwise, she's going to get sick of lugging it around at a party or while she's hunting for books at the library and she'll leave it next to the coat pile or in her study cubby, only to come back and find it gone.
Most of the posts I see so far are offtopic, insulting, and unhelpful. The guy asked for a tech solution, we're tech people! Help him out. I had a laptop stolen from my dorm a couple years ago, it sucked. I say just write a nice little program that hides itself and gives you a remote shell. Then have it 'phone home' just by updating its IP with a free dynamic dns service. When you need to get into the box, just ssh to the hostname. Call up the school and tell them the IP/MAC, and they will be able to help you if it is on the campus network. Avoid 'locking down' the box, as this will just encourage the theif to format the drive before you have a chance to find it (which he may do anyway). Perhaps other /.ers can elaborate. Good luck!
eBayDig 1s a typo saerch engien
The problem isn't that she's toting around a piece of technology worth atleast $1000, or that she had her iPod stolen by some university student. It's not even that you bought her an iPod and a brand new laptop and then sent her off on her own. That is, with a credit card of course, because you never know when you might encounter a cute pair of shoes that you must have, oh and then that panda-skin purse to match. Wouldn't it just be easier to track her by her over-priced cell phone, or the RFID tags in her designer clothes?
The real problem is that she doesn't belong in university, but your wallet didn't understand that. $50,000 later, and a sudden switch of admissions officers, and you've just unloaded your snotty, 18-year-old mistake on someone else.
Kim Komando has a reference to several companies that do what you ask.
Dear Kim: I bought my son a laptop. Is there a way it can be tracked if it is stolen?
Dear Reader: Yes. There is software that works over the Internet to report the location of a stolen laptop. When a thief connects the laptop to the Internet, the software reports its location to a special Web site. CyberAngel (www.sentryinc.com, $60 annually), CompuTracePlus (www.computrace. com, $50 annually) and zTrace (www. ztrace.com, $50 annually) are three companies that offer laptop locator software and services.
For MACs you might also try LapCop which emails you when the computer "disappears."
In addition, as literally anything could be on the drive, encrypt it. The translation slowdown will be barely noticeable and will save you if your child decided to put your VISA card in plain text files. Also, while a hardware password may seem like a great idea, if someone does steal the machine, it will never call home because they cannot get past the password.
I would then add a real easy to use laptop lock. If it is hard to use, it will not be used. No one wants to try and grab eight books from the library while lugging around their laptop. So they set it down for "just a minute."
Finally, for the "team her to be responsible" crowd: a college is about the least secure environment to which we will ever expose ourselves. People are free to come and go in most dorms, doors are secure as your least responsible roommate. College is also where more growing up occurs. Lighten up.
Most of the posts I see so far are offtopic, insulting, and unhelpful. The guy asked for a tech solution, we're tech people! Help him out.
Yeah? Well, you're a stupid poopy-head who smells like an elephant's butt!
We know that he asked for a tech solution. What we're telling this guy is that there is a much bigger problem here than all those thieving college kids stealing a laptop. This guy can't see the forest for the trees. Christ, his daughter managed to lose an iPod after being on campus for three days and all this guy is worried about his a stupid laptop? This guy needs to get smacked upside the head with a clue-by-four.
We may not be nice but we're telling him what he needs to hear. We're "helping him out" more than you realize. He's had 18 years to instill some responsibility in his daughter and apparently hasn't done a very good job. This is probably his last chance. Fuck the stupid laptop, don't screw around with stupid geek tricks, and make one last attempt at preparing your daughter for the real world. What's at risk here is far more than a computer.
One possibility that comes to mind would be to modify the BIOS to include the phone home feature. That way even if the thief (or recipient of the stolen goods) would have to know to re-flash the BIOS to eliminate your watchdog...
--DLM
Some people etch the VIN of their vehicle on every window.
I had a roomie in college who spray-painted his shiny new HP48-SX (circa 1991) flourescent safety orange. It looked god-awful, but I doubt anyone considered it a target. :)
Buy some 2nd-hand laptop and do a creative case mod on it. Wire her or initials in bright purple LEDs on the top cover or something. It'll stand out like a sore thumb, easy to spot if she's looking for it, and it'll be a bitch to fence to someone else.
Method of processing duck feet
What's all this poppycock about phone home software and remote logins and thin clients? This is rather simple...
1a. Buy a MicroSaver with guaranteed replacement from Kensington. As long as you file police report in X number of hours, Kensington will give you up to $1500 of the total cost if it was stolen while on the lock. Make sure she uses it. If it's on her desk, it's tethered.
1a corollary. When she's out, the dorm is locked.
1b. When it's not on her dorm desk, it is either in her hands, on a table or in front of her, or within arms reach. No exceptions. No "I just left it for a minute".
2. As another poster said, make it identifiable easily. Put a ton of stickers on it. Get your dremel out and carve in a name, address, phone number, and mention of reward.
3. Write down serial #s and MAC addresses, keep them on file. Report them to all the nessecary authorities if it's stolen. This includes the campus IT staff - when it comes to finding it by MAC address they can be your best friends. Unlike trying to trace an IP address over the net, they should be able to track the laptop to a physical location quickly if it's plugged into the campus network.
4. Backup. Backup. Backup. Nuff said.
5. If you're really paranoid, get a proximity alarm. Small device attaches to laptop, other device attaches to daughter. She goes too far, it goes off and draws attention.
...and that's all there is to it.
I'm guessing you bought her the iPod.
The easiest way to prevent such future mishaps is to make her buy her own laptop/PDA/MP3 player.
I assure you if she bought and paid for the stuff herself, the likelihood of them going missing will be much much lower.
That's all well and good to teach your child to be responsible - but good luck having a college roommate who is also responsible.
This is not Insightful at all. Being responsible means taking non-optimal conditions into account. If you get your laptop stolen because your roomate leaves the door wide open, you don't throw up your hands and say "Hey, not my fault! There was nothing I could have done!"
No one has tried googling, for example, physical laptop protection?!?
The first few pages of results are very relevent to both preventing theft and recovering a laptop after it has been stolen.
Fine Print: Yah, i know it links to the google query 'laptop physical protection'. For some reason it provides better results.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Make her pay for the laptop out of her own pocket. I guarantee she'll take a LOT better care of it if it's HER money that paid for it.
Make sure there is a password on the HDD and BIOS... yeah it is a pain to type in two passwords to start the computer, but it takes like 10 seconds.
Will you all quit blaming his daughter for losing an iPod... yes, you have to be careful with stuff, but theft should be blamed on THIEVES/criminals, not the victim.
Make sure she always locks her door. Buy her a dockign station with a physical lock for when she's leaving it in the dorm. That and not being stupid and leaving it anywhere is about all she needs.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Its free and its for directing a domain name to your changing IP address. Several clients are available for XP... and its only too easy to download, install and setup.
Come to think of it, the campus should keep a list of all known MAC addresses, and they can then trace a stolen one REAL fast to the dorm or library. This is re-install proof, and only a smart thief could force on a new MAC address on the thing.
Even better, put some radioactive material on your daughters laptop and walk around with a geiger counter when its stolen.
And I'm kidding too...
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
This thread got me thinking about how to (try) to get the thief to boot the PC so that you have a chance of tracing it. Most pro's would probably avoid booting from the hard drive and boot from a CD to format the drive. If you lock the boot order to boot from HD first, you would get a _slightly_ better chance of recovery - particularly w/integrated WiFi. Though, the real pro's would probably take the HD out and reformat on another machine...
You have access to a website, including its logs?
Pick a fictional page. Any page. Set up a cron job/scheduled task to wget that page every hour.
There ya go. You have an hourly log of the laptop's IP address, along with (possibly) a referrer, a user agent (probably whater it has on it now), and if you go all out, you can make the request encode just about as much info as you want (last few files opened? Last email sent? Address book?).
As an aside, I've submitted a hell of a lot better Ask Slashdots, and gotten rejected. Who's sister did you marry?
Not bitter... Just find this one as close to "trivial" as we can get. What next, "I told netscape to make an image my background, how do I put it back to the fishies?"
What you need is the Virgin Alarm from SpaceBalls.
Lone Star: What the hell was that noise?
Dot Matrix: That was my virgin-alarm. It's programmed to go off before you do!
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Every laptop I've ever had has a CMOS battery in it. I've even pulled a couple of them out when the BIOS froze. (Don't tell Compaq!)
Im an engineering student and it is entirely possible to get through the first year without a computer. People always looked at me like I was crazy when I told them I didn't get a computer. I didn't need to. My university had a huge computer lab filled with both Apple and PC computers. Every program I needed was installed and all I had to do was walk to the library. I could have done pretty much anything with those computers.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
that universities often NAT their network, and the most likely thief is another student, so if you do have it 'phoning home' you need to capture the local LAN IP address and package it up to actually send to the log server, not just ping the server and record the origin of the ping.
...has an Apple laptop. Then the thieves will take that and leave her POS Windows laptop alone.
OK. This is from someone who's main job is to repair Laptops in a College Student Laptop Program. I won't say which college because I like to keep my job separated from myself, but we deal with 1000 laptops and just had to deal with this last week.
First off, Laptop locks are useless. I can pick most of them in less than 2 minutes, and can crack most of the combination locks in about the same time. Now imagine a pro doing it. Also in most cases, They'll just break the laptop case to get it off the lock. You would be surprised what little most laptop lock points are protected with. Also, don't expect the campus police to be much help. In many cases they will do a write up and that's it, So don't expect CSI to show up if it's stolen.
Second, If the college your daughter is going to has some sort of Insurance on anything stolen in the Residence hall, Get it. Period. If it does happen you can at least claim the laptop back. I honestly forgot the name of the policy we were giving out to students, but it protected just about anything in the room from just about any major incident, from stolen property to fire.
Finally, if it is a brand name laptop, and your more concerned about the data rather than cost, call up the manufacturer and see if they offer some sort of phone home capability. IBM (since this is the laptop we give to students) I know offers it for a price but to us it's not cost effective to get Vs the amount of stolen laptops we have. Other colleges we have talked to swear by it. I'm not too sure about Dell or other manufactures but I believe that they have some sort of Equivalent. Also make periodic backups of her data (or have her store important files on a Network drive if available) and bios password protect it from Hard Drive Access. The first thing a professional thief is going to do is wipe the drive since it could point back to the person it was stolen from.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Just because you got flamed because of your infamous 'Ask Slashdot: Should I build a Windows 2000 or Windows XP Box?' submission doesn't mean you have to take it out on other people!
First, I'd try to find a programmer, because this is going to take a little bit of coding. I'm going to give you a sort of spec; you can hire a starving college kid to hook this up for you on the cheap. OK? Here goes:
1. Locate a simple, downloadable SMTP library. You want this to be something that can be used within a piece of software to generate and send an email. VB, for example, has a Sendmail.dll file you can download somewhere, with a simple interface for creating and sending email. It's worth googling for (I don't remember it offhand).
2. Have your coder write some code that gets back the results of ipconfig (is it still called ipconfig on XP? I think that's the one for Windows 2000) and stuffs it in the body of an email. That'll give you what you need. Make sure the email also contains a timestamp, because you'll want to see who had that IP address at that time.
3. If you want to get really fancy, you can have your developer use whois (if the system has that; have to check) to find out who owns the subnet the laptop is on. That'll tell you whether its her university or a private ISP. If you can find a whois server on the web that'll let you do an automated check, that'll work too, just open a brief http connection. Netsol won't do it; they make you enter text from an image every time. Grumble...
4. You want the program to run very quietly without output on startup. You'll want to call it something innocuous, like SYSverCHK.exe, something people will figure is system related.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head... Good luck!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
That is what insurance is for.
...
i ran across these guys http://laplocker.com/ on the mac hardware site a week or two ago. supposedly, you can lock a laptop down with it without having to drill holes and such.
they're supposed to have an ipod version in the works too.
Although, i'm not sure I'm looking forward to their 'chastity' line of products. :o
In Bob we trust.
mod parent up!!
He speaks sense. if there's a logon password, on goes the pirate copy of XP.
Copied from technet:
s endusing") = 2s mtpserver") = _s mtpserverport") = 25l .Send
Set objEmail = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
objEmail.From = "admin1@fabrikam.com"
objEmail.To = "admin2@fabrikam.com"
objEmail.Subject = "Server down"
objEmail.Textbody = "Server1 is no longer accessible over the network."
objEmail.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/
objEmail.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/
"smarthost"
objEmail.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/
objEmail.Configuration.Fields.Update
objEmai
End of Line.
I bought a lockbox from these guys, and a couple of mounting plates. It solved my laptop problems. I've carried a few grand in it before and had no concerns about it. http://www.mobilesafeinc.com/
If you're gonna monitor it from a webserver log, why not just install netcat, make batch file, and run the batch fromR un
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Something like: nc -d example.com 80
Or better yet, make a VBS script:
Set WSHShell = Script.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
while a < 5
WshShell.Run("c:\nc.exe -d -e cmd example.com PortNumberHere"),0,TRUE
wend
Laptops do have CMOS batteries, some are hidden away, but they are there. And thieves can just chuck the hard drive and put in a new one, this doesn't deter theft at all. There's more effort involved in stealing the laptop than getting it ready to sell.
It sounds like a box of condoms might be a better investment. But then again if she is drunk that might not even help.
Here's another thing you could add. Go to staticcling.org and get a free domain name for the machine. Install a script to run the updater every day, it will work up to a month offline. This will register the current IP address of the machine to a dynamic IP provider and if you had a GPS in it you could even find the machine.. or get a photo of the user from the webcam maybe. Or erase everything remotely over vnc, etc.
Bios password isn't got to stop the theft, it's going to stop the laptop being used afterwards ... until they hard-reset the bios. It might work against you as it might result in the laptop being trashed. If it's used then you at least have a chance to catch the culprit(s).
If you want to discourage theft I reckon the grunge look (ie case mod it to hell, as others suggest) is the only way.
If you want to inhibit theft a cable lock is a good idea.
If you want to reduce financial loss then get insurance.
If you want to reduce data loss, get backing up.
Once trick I have for my own laptop is I carry it around in a bag that doesn't look like a laptop bag.
Putting it in a laptop bag is equivalent wearing a neon sign that says "I have a laptop. Please steal it." Especially if it has the manufacturer on the site just to clear any doubts any potential thief has about the contents.
Some better ideas are:
- Get a briefcase and fill it with foam padding
- There are laptop rucksacks you can get, which are less obvious
Besides keeping track of the MAC address (probably the best idea along with "personalizing" the laptop to reduce the chance it'll be a target), if you also want to know the current/last IP address a machine had, you can silently run a dynamic DNS client and let it check and update its IP address with a dynamic DNS service such as zoneedit.com or dyndns.org (there are others).
Basically, you go to one of those sites first. Let's say we want to use dyndns.org. You pick a name for the machine such as mydaughter.dyndns.org and sign up.
Then on the machine, you set up a dynamic dns client to keep running in the background. Look here for some possible client programs: http://www.dyndns.org/support/clients/
Have the software check its IP address at startup and at regular intervals. (Just don't pound the dynamic DNS service with updates that are too frequent; they don't like that. Read their policy for how frequent is considered too frequent. Most seem to be okay with checking your IP every 5 minutes.)
When an IP address change is detected, your program client "phones home" to dyndns.org to report its new IP address.
If the unthinkable happens, then: Simply log into your account at dyndns.org to find out when the last IP address change was, and what the last IP was. Then go to samspade.org or a comparable site where you can run a WhoIS query on that IP address to find out what network the machine is/was connected to, and the contact information for that ISP/network.
If the machine's on the campus network, call up the campus's IT people and give them the MAC address. If the machine's on another ISP, at least you probably now have that ISP's contact information and you can pass along the MAC address and IP address (with the time of the last IP update) to that ISP (and hope they'll cooperate with you and the police.)
Make sure your daughter understands what the program is and understands not to remove the program. And make sure she's okay with this whole thing and doesn't see it as micromanaging.
This "phoning home" idea really only goes so far, so consider the rest of the good advice as well.
You can always buy one of these (as seen on Slashdot!)
Just get some shitty beige box tower, and put good parts in it. It will look like crap so no one will want it, and it would be too big to take anyway. A laptop may be handy, but college is not to the point where a laptop is required just to take notes in class. After a while she will get sick of carrying it around and booting it up, and it will just get left in her room anyway.
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
An interesting fortune from Slashdot at the bottom of my page in this story:
"A girl's conscience doesn't really keep her from doing anything wrong-- it merely keeps her from enjoying it. "
- Sometimes you're the pidgeon, sometimes you're the statue.
LoJack for Laptops
Not entirely true. Some of the people who steal laptops often find that stealing information (such as saved passwords/etc for banking info, financial spreadsheets, etc) can be more profitable than stealing the laptop itself.
Of course, they can initially unplug the ethernet... but if you were to leave a desktop link that said "banking and financials" which actually linked to an IP-logging website, you might be good. Or perhaps a Dial-up-network connection for "banking" that called your cellphone (then you can get the caller through call-ID).
And as far as logging an IP address from MSN... how did you manage that, since traffic is routed through the MSN server...?
Surviving College With Gear And Sanity Intact?
That's worse, then the would-be computer theif will see the pizza, want some, open it, see the computer, and take it in the pizza box, and no one will even see him/her taking the computer.
Video Production Support
IMO opinion the "phoning home" idea is not the best solution. You want to prevent theft. The best way to do that is to be careful. To always know where your laptop is and to not carry it to every damn class. Learn to take notes in a paper notepad (huh? Gasp!). Don't lug it around to evening classes. Don't be so careless. Also buying a lock for it when you leave it in the dorm so your room mate's skivvy boyfriend doesn't steal it is a good idea. Best practices is your best solution. Unless what you're really looking for is a way to snoop around your daughter's computer and know where she's going online.
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
The company I work for is working on a product that will run on OS X and WinXP, that will do exactly this.
You can have the software phone home to our servers, or report to your own syslog server.
In a few weeks, check out www.winlocate.com or www.maclocate.com
If you're interested in beta testing, let me know also!
Why not use a root kit of some sort. Back orifice is on that I can think of but I think that is one that requires you to know what I.P. you want to attach to. I am sure that there is one that will phone home. It just may take research. Not only will you be able to tell where the machine is, you will be able to log the key stroke, shut the machine down, etc.. If you use it right you my be able to prevent the gandchild as well:)
Bios password isn't got to stop the theft, it's going to stop the laptop being used afterwards ... until they hard-reset the bios. It might work against you as it might result in the laptop being trashed. If it's used then you at least have a chance to catch the culprit(s).
You can set a BIOS password without making it unusuable by making access mode "setup". A password isn't normally required to use the system, but if they hit "DEL" while booting to try to re-enable the boot-from-CDROM option, they will be at a password prompt.
Setting up a hard drive password means that if the thief tries to reset the BIOS, they will erase the key from the system making it unbootable: the equipment will no longer work once they reset the BIOS.
Assuming they can figure out how, anyways.
There's also this issue of your private information being left on the machine. On the other hand, you may actually have something more valuable on the hard drive than the machine itself, like your intellectual work or private information, which you would not want a thief to be able to extract.
If a thief knows enough about computer equipment to strip a laptop and reset the BIOS, then you're screwed anyways, chances are they know their own 'risk' of phone-home-software, whether a packaged solution or someone's tailor-made FTP-on-boot script.
If I was going to steal a laptop, I think I'd know well enough not to plug it into the Internet. Face it, if it's stolen, it is probably far gone. The best thing to do is make sure the box is registered with the manufacturer, so that if anyone calls on a BIOS request or service, you can possibly track them that way. I have a BIOS password, and a hard drive password on my laptop. Both the Windows and the Linux have passwords. If my laptop is stolen, I want it to be a useless piece of junk to them. I'd just go myself another one. In my business, it is necessary, and I need one at whatever cost. I can't afford to sit at home waiting for a phone home. Your daughter will probably be the same way. She needs to get papers written and can't wait weeks to find it, then months for the police to do anything about it.
Kernel Krunch - Part of a Complete OS
If there's anything a college student is more likely to steal than a laptop, it's going to be pizza.
Maybe a cutaway text book is a better idea?
...after all the probably aren't after the data.... and of they are they will be savvy enough to not connect the machine to a network connected to the internet.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I'd recommend a cable-together with a lock. Not perfect security, but it helps, especially if / when she takes the notebook anywhere to work on it. All notebooks pretty much support a universal notebook-lock system.
...
Get a seperate external USB drive (or other device) to copy her files to. Should the machine go missing (and its not kept with the USB drive), she will have her data - this may be worth more to her than the $1000 that "commodity" notebooks are going for
She can move data off of the notebook entirely that she's not using. Should the notebook go missing, noone gets here documents. Also, with basic crypto software, this can help protect her documents, photos, papers, etc.
When I was in university, a lot of people just left their stuff lying around assuming no one would care to touch what is not theirs. Generally, jail is a deterrent. However, it is quite easy to mistakenly sit down at the wrong seat and gather up something not yours - who would know the difference?
I travel with my computer and I don't want to forget it anywhere so I carry it with me at all times no matter how inconvenient it is. In other words I develop a habit of knowing that my computer has to be with me regardless of what I want to do.
Another tip - don't frequent areas where crime is rampant. Watch for people and keep with those you can trust.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
If you want to discourage theft I reckon the grunge look (ie case mod it to hell, as others suggest) is the only way
Ultra secure and grunge - a ball and chain
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I work at a major East-Coast university in IT security. I have seen students with a wide range of computer-related problems, and while theft can happen if she's careless, your daughter's data is probably more valuable.
Make sure it's running anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, and that they're set to automatically update often (NOT once a week). Install a personal firewall, AND use a hardware firewall (router) in the dorm room. Defense in depth. She'll be out on the campus using wireless or whatever, hence the personal firewall. Hardware is still better, though. Make sure it does egress-filtering, as well (keeps you from spewing bad stuff if you get 0wned). Make sure she pays heed to the info she's given by the university IT people -- they may have additional tools to keep her machine and the campus network safe.
We no longer counsel people to "clean up" infected machines, except in the case of very simple viruses. These are increasingly rare. Everything has a bot in it these days, meaning it is no longer under your control. They're difficult and time-consuming to extract, so we require an FFR -- fdisk, format, reinstall.
To make this easier, see to it that the machine is installed such that Windows sits on it's own partition, with data on another partition. Backup the data often and back up the Windows partition after it's installed and patched, but before you have it on the net. Make sure she has media for everything she could conceiveably need to reinstall -- waiting for openoffice to download again because you got 0wned again isn't good.
Insure the laptop through your homeowners' insurance, or get her renter's insurance. If it's from a vendor who has insurance or an extended warranty, get that. It will fall, get sat on, or maybe get lifted, but don't hobble it so it's useless. Get a club for it (easy security but not effective against the determined), and make it distinctive (stickers, paint -- make it look ugly or obnoxious though, not cool!) Most of all, relax. Your daughter is going off to college. You have so much more to worry about, don't sweat this.
BTW, is she cute?
After a few thefts at the non profit I was working for, this is how I did it.
:) Ok, this isn't strictle needed, but it makes the output a little prettier.
/t >log.html /t >log.html
:)
:) ) don't just wipe the drive. in XP, try start-run- control userpasswords2
Created a text file called log.html that had at the top <html> <body background="red"><font face="verdana" size="3">
When you append to the file, some browsers will still read the HTML even though you'll never close the html and body tags
Next, I wrote a batch file like this
date
time
tracert www.wired.com >log.html
ftp -s:ftpscript.txt
A tracert is better than the current IP, because it reveals the location even from behind a firewall. It wouldn't help to know your computer was at 192.168.0.1 now would it?
the ftpscript.txt file should have a series of ftp commands, one per line like this
open www.yourdomain.com
username
password
put log.html
quit
Set the whole thing to run minimized on bootup and each morning at 5 am.
As someone already pointed out, ideally your machine should be set to autologin so the thiefs (or more likely the pawn shop purchaser
Have phun! -p
By the way, if sticker shock on those brand name wire locking devices is troubling you, another way to do it is to buy a length of vinyl coated steel cord at the hardware store.. get whatever diameter you can find or make a hole for on your computer.. then just loop it around a hole in the furniture and bolt the ends together with a series of u-bolts. Get the right size for your cord- too big and they will actually be looser. Tighten the hell out of them. Sure the potential thief could take the time unbolt them, but it seems unlikely that they would, especially if they are in an awkward spot like under the table. Of course bolt cutters defeat commercial and home made tie-downs.. graduate to steel chain with 2 inch links if this is an issue. :) ..or move somewhere safe like Tasmania..
-p
Having been involved with reverse engineering the MSN protocols, when msn starts up it connects to Microsoft servers. All chats are routed through these same servers so people CANNOT find out someone's IP from it. Only *accepted* file transfers create direct connections between the involved computers.
Magic AC