Lenovo Service Disables Laptops With a Text Message

narramissic writes "Lenovo plans to announce on Tuesday a service that allows users to remotely disable a PC by sending a text message. A user can send the command from a specified cell phone number — each ThinkPad can be paired with up to 10 cell phones — to kill a PC. The software will be available free from Lenovo's Web site. It will also be available on certain ThinkPad notebooks equipped with mobile broadband starting in the first half of 2009. 'You steal my PC and ... if I can deliver a signal to that PC that turns it off, hey, I'm good now,' said Stacy Cannady, product manager of security at Lenovo. 'The limitation here is that you have to have a WAN card in the PC and you must be paying a data plan for it,' Cannady added."

Comments

Why des this require "special" software?

[The Cisco Kid]

write a script so anytime your laptop connects automatically reports its ip to a home machine

if your laptop is stolen, wait for it to connect, then ssh to it and do 'rm -rf /', or maybe `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/[s|h]hda`. Or for that matter, anything else you want, like perhaps instead of disabling it, monitor what the thief does with it, assuming he can get around the login prompt.

(Oh, what? Oh, this is for laptops running that toy OS platform that only the ignorant masses and corporate sycophants use? Oh, nevermind then. they are stupid enough to actually *pay* for a service like this - go ahead and make money off them - but I wonder, why post news about something like this to a site intended for non-morons?)

Re:Interesting

[houghi]

The junk that steals my portable is not interested in my data. He is interested in selling the PC for a fix.

This is not about data protection. It is about making the device unusable. Just like you can block your phone when it is stolen.

It will not stop thiefs of stealing your device. It will not protect your data. As far as I read it does not even claim to do that.