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Delete Data On Netbook If Stolen?
An anonymous reader writes "I have just moved overseas on a 2-year working holiday visa and so I picked up a netbook for the interim, an MSI Wind U100 Plus running WinXP. I love it to bits. But as I am traveling around I am somewhat worried about theft. Most of my important stuff is in Gmail and Google Docs; however, I don't always have Net access and find it useful to gear up the offline versions for both. Ideally I would like to securely delete all the offline data from the hard drive if it were stolen. Since it is backed up in the cloud, and the netbook is so cheap I don't really care about recovery, a solution that bricks it would be fine — and indeed would give me a warm glow knowing a prospective thief would have wasted their time. But it's not good if they can extract the HD and get at the data some other way. All thief-foiling suggestions are welcome, be they software, hardware, or other."
If using Ubuntu then visit and ask the question at http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=338, they are friendly bunch and don't bite.
the part where the original poster said "Running Linux" may not have made it all the way in.
Fixed that... This is /. we can't acknowledge anything other than linux. Zombies say "mmmm brains".. /.ers say "mmmm Linux"
FYI the Irish have a law against Blasphemy so I will appraciate it if you never mention that product again or I'll be forced to sue you.