Which Lost/Stolen Laptop Trackers Do You Like?

saudadelinux writes "I was held up at gunpoint in July, and my laptop was stolen. There are companies out there which, for a fee, install tracker software on your laptop. If it's stolen or lost, they track its whereabouts whenever it gets on the 'Net and work with local law enforcement and ISPs to find the machine. I'm wondering: has anyone used one of these services? Does anyone have a recommendation for which company to go with? My new laptop is a a dual-boot Ubuntu/XP machine, and the couple of companies I've looked at do Windows-only. Are there Linux options?"

Comments

Re:I have a question for the question...

[bigdavex]

I've been the victim of a stolen vehicle before... and I know police really don't give a diddly squat about stolen vehicles. Sure, paperwork will be filed but that's all they do. When a stolen vehicle is recovered it's almost always recovered due to happenstance. So, my question is.. what makes anyone think police care about your $1000 laptop when they barely care about your $20,000 vehicle as it is?

The impression we get from TV crime drama is out of touch with reality. For lack of resources or otherwise, even violent crimes don't get the attention CSI portrays. I was shot by a robber at a friend's house, and the detective declined to review the crime scene with me. When the police allowed my friend back into the house after they collected the evidence, he pointed out the shooter's hat was still on the table.

There's nobody with tweezers going through the carpet looking for hairs. Nobody really gives a shit about a laptop or a car except the victim.

Re:Don't bother.

[QuantumRiff]

Actually, Some of the newer Dell and HP laptops have the tracking software built into the bios/motherboard. Were looking at using it in combination with the Encrypted laptop hard drives, and fingerprint readers.. For us, its not so much about getting the laptop back, but making sure they can't get at our data. Privacy of our customers is critical. Also, the Computrace stuff built into the Dells can be told to remotely wipe the hard drive.

Nothing is BulletProof, but do it with HARDWARE

[Kyrka]

I've been down this road several times... and can't say enough good things about CompuTrace. Most of their staff are former law enforcement, and there is an "insurance policy" for lack of a better word that accompanies situations in which they locate the device but it's in, say, the Soviet Union and the like. (For example, if stolen, properly reported, and unrecoverable within 30 days you get $1K the first year, $500.00 the second, and $250.00 the third towards replacement.)

To me, the most vitally important aspect is going for something that is hardware based. With TPM enabled bios and such these days on a modern laptop, the client is embedded and does not rely on your OS whatsoever. This is great considering most of what we seem to be discussing in this thread is Linux.

CompuTrace worked so well that in our tests (and later, based on four thefts out of 300 systems) that we noted the following: - I can wipe the hard drive (even low-level format) and the system will _still_ phone home immediately once on the Internet. - If you take the hard drive out and place it in a different system, _THAT_ system _also_ phoned home, based on the TPM components there.

(This was mostly HP TC4200 and HP TC4400 tablets.)
www.absolute.com

Orbicule's Undercover for OS X (yeah, not Linux..)

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/

I use that on my mac machines. I know it's not linux specifically but I just thought I'd toss that out there. It uses the built-in cam to take clandestine photos, too...