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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."
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.
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.
You have a naive daughter (who let her iPod get stolen)
I agree but I'll keep it on topic: The best way to prevent theft is to sit her down and tell her to be more careful!
If you think about it, a couple days for orientation is a very short period of time for something to get stolen. Hopefully this iPod thing will get her head straight.
Latewire
Same boat - I am so not looking forward to that day.
OP: Got a webserver of your own? Why not put the Windows equivalent of "curl http://myserver.example.com/secretpage" in autoexec.bat or whatever passes for a bootup script these days? If the laptop goes missing, watch your server logs like a hawk and get ready to call the police the instant a geographically-identifiable IP makes a request.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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!
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.
Jesus christ, How do you go from someone having something stolen (especially something as desirable and easy to take as an ipod) to someone who is so carteless that she'll go out and get pregnant by the first guy she lays eyes on. Where do you get off on insulting a parent like that, are you stupid or juat a misogynist bastard.
Pardon my rough language but it was no more then your attitude deserved.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
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
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.
Of course for this to work, the laptop'd need a working Internet connection.
If it's stolen, it probably won't get connected to the Internet...
Also because of the logon passwords, probably the first thing that'll happen to it is it'll be reinstalled off a pirated copy of Windows and it'll no longer have the software to phone home.
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.
Also if you bought her that ipod, don't buy her another one. Let her learn the lesson of keeping an eye on stuff all the time (Unless it was pried from her hands by a ruthless thug).