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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?"
Go check out Undercover from Orbicule. Even if you don't have a Mac you should go read the success stories that they have posted (complete with photos of the perps taken from the Macbooks built-in camera).
Well for Windows I can tell you LoJack for laptop sucks. You should try creating your own script. See the thing with Windows crapaganda based "trackers" is they mainly track to src IP of wherever their little daemons call from. Means nothing since most ISP's won't provide you with an IOTA of information without a court order. In most cases in bigger cities, your machine will be wiped by the pawn shop owner.
If you want something truly truly effective, talk to a vet about something similar to Verichip. Find out whether you can perhaps open up the machine and place it somewhere. Anything else would have to be IP based. For that matter a shell script will tell you what network your machine is coming from, nothing more. Unless you get creative but chances are if its stolen 1) it will be sanitized from all software 2) HIGHLY likely anything NIX based will automatically be wiped unless its swiped at say Linuxworld Op or something
Infiltrated dot Net
Go to Orbicule and read the success stories about their Undercover product for Macs.
I would argue that the cost of any tracking solutions is bound to be more than (the chance of laptop being stolen x value of laptop itself).
I bought Orbicule's Undercover for my MacBook Pro for all of $59. The license covers up to 5 Macs so I can install it on other Macs as well. There's no monthly costs for their service. I consider that money well spent for protecting my laptop. The success stories posted on their website demonstrate that laptops can be recovered within a couple of days in close to the same condition as when they were stolen.