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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?"
It seems to me that you can always install some software like that yourself. Once I lost my laptop in my own house. Since I have ipcheck in a cron job, updating my laptop's IP address on DynDns, I just SSHed into it and made it play loud sounds until I found it under the bed. (I don't answer questions about what it was doing there)
find -name "*base*" -exec chown us {} \; ; ln -s
Actually, there is something to be said for reducing the value of the stolen good. If you make it more dangerous to resell and purchase stolen laptops through identification techniques (engravings, serial ID marked stolen in the laptop vendor's customer service database etc.), you reduce the incentive for stealing them in the first place.
Just buying insurance does nothing to improve the situation, it just mitigates your own risk (which is good). Encryption and backups are good too, of course.
I suggest you read about Computrace and how they offered me money to hush and go away with their false claims. http://www.infiltrated.net/lojack.pdf
Infiltrated dot Net
1) The hardware. In which case, the data will likely be destroyed immediately. There is no guarantee the machine will be booted with your hoodwinked "locator" software in tow.
2) The data. In which case, the drive will be imaged or some other "offline" method will suck up the data without booting the OS's controls.
The reason why remote wipe/kill functions work on a small device like a blackberry is because the service provider's network is required for the device to be usable. And even then, there's still the option that the theft is hardware-only motivated, and the thing will get wiped anyway. The blackberry wipe wasn't ever really intended on being used for a physical recovery method.
Potentially, a system BIOS would be a good place to run a "phone home" program, except that it would require advanced components, like a TCP/IP stack, etc., to run properly, and it could still be easily wiped by replacing the firmware with boot media. Apple, for that matter, has an upper hand at such a tool since they "own" both the hardware and software. But either way, what you're attempting to do is no more possible than DRM (and Slashdotters know that DRM is nothing short of an attempt at perpetual motion).
So lesson #1 is protect your data and insure your hardware. And please remember, that "protect your data" really could mean not having a copy of your data on the laptop at all. After all, encrypted data in the hands of an adversary is still your data, just with a time-sensitive lock on it (the length of time needed for CPU power to increase where access is trivial, or the length of time a well-resourced adversary will need to destroy today's top crypto).
libertarian: (n) socially liberal, financially conservative; neither left, nor right.
4. Locate the IP address via DynDNS. Log into the stolen machine. 5. Stream the audio from mics (pipe it from raw device to mp3 and send compressed). Do the same with webcam if it works with Linux 6. Go then show up and stick that fucker up with a gun. See how he likes it. "I want my laptop back.."
7. Get arrested for assault with a deadly weapon
8. Go to jail
I'm not sure where people on slashdot get some of these retarded ideas from but I know someone personally who was held at gunpoint for his belongings when we were in college. The thief used his cellphone that very night and with the help of the cell company he was able to get all of the numbers the person called. A reverse directory lookup later he had the address of one of the thieves friend/female family member.
After waiting in his car for two days (no shower, no sleep) he finally saw the guy who robbed him walking to his girlfriends house and held him at gunpoint. The guy who had originally robbed him called the cops and told them HE was held at gunpoint and guess where this genius is at now? In a state prison doing his third year for assault with a deadly weapon. When he was sentenced the judge told him that he didn't see any difference between him and the guy who he was robbed by.
Before you start posting on slashdot advocating vigilante justice I suggest you think about the consequences of being a vigilante. You aren't dog the bounty hunter and this isn't A&E.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
One of the best self-made solutions I've heard of is a custom bootloader image (pretty easy to do in grub). It displays a picture of the owner, his or her name, and a phone number to contact if the laptop is found. It'll be the first thing the pawn-shop clerk sees when they turn it on to test it out.
Badass Resumes