Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Do You Prepare For The Theft Of Your PC?
A security-conscious Slashdot reader has theft insurance -- but worries whether it covers PC theft. And besides the hassles of recreating every customization after restoring from backups, there's also the issue of keeping personal data private.
I currently keep important information on a hidden, encrypted partition so an ordinary thief won't get much off of it, but that is about the extent of my preparation... What would you do? Some sort of beacon to let you know where your stuff is? Remote wipe? Online backup?
There's a couple of issues here -- including privacy, data recovery, deterrence, compensation -- each leading to different ways to answer the question: what can you actually do to prepare for the possibility? So use the comments to share your own experiences. How have you prepared for the theft of your PC?
There's a couple of issues here -- including privacy, data recovery, deterrence, compensation -- each leading to different ways to answer the question: what can you actually do to prepare for the possibility? So use the comments to share your own experiences. How have you prepared for the theft of your PC?
For privacy, the simplest and most helpful thing to do is use full-disk encryption for your hard drive. This will significantly increase the amount of effort required to access your data and any online accounts (e.g. bank accounts).
For data, I just store all of my sensitive data on the cloud (e.g. tax returns, personal documents). If you have large amounts of important data such as photos, you may have to pay a monthly fee for good cloud storage. But it's definitely worth it. There are many, many other things that can go wrong besides theft that can cause data loss.
It's also good to practice good online account security (e.g. using 2-factor authentication), and make sure to reset all of your critical passwords in the event of theft of a computer.
Short answer:
I do not need to prepare because it has been part of the whole process for a while.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I used to be the "crack" man for a couple of home burglars. IE, I used to unknowingly crack windows passwords, reinstall OS's, etc for some guys who would break into houses and steal shit. They told me that they'd buy the laptops for cheap at flea markets, and flip them. I of course didn't believe it, so I started recording serial numbers around the 3rd laptop. Funny enough, eventually I buddied up with them and one of them came clean with what they do and how they do it. (Wanting me to do more laptops at a bulk discount.) I agreed, did a few more for them, and then submitted all the serial numbers, text messages, and license plates to the police... In all I cracked/reinstalled around 20 computers, only a couple came back as hits as stolen by the police.
After that, I had to get serious about defense. If those fuckers ever put two and two together, they'll know who busted them. On top of this, I have tens of thousands of easily steal-able computer stuff too.
So here is what I learned working with professional thieves:
1) They want to get in as quick and quite as possible.
2) They want to get in when no one is home (9am-3pm)
3) They want to be not visible from the road, but close to the main road. (So back side of apartment buildings.)
4) They want to be in and out in 3-5minutes. Thus negating burglar alarms.
5) They're looking for easy to steal stuff. Laptops,Guns, Money/IDs, Video Games, Video Game Consoles, TV's, PC's, anything else (in that order).
6) They don't have a soul, they don't give a shit about you or your stuff.
Here is how you prevent your PC from being stolen:
1) Start with making your home difficult to break in:
Most entries are through an exterior door, generally by kicking it in. Replace all striker plates with a 4 screw system that has at least 2 2-inch long screws. Replace or add a metal plate around the lock of the door. You can do both of these in an apartment, and turn 1 kick entry into a 10 kick, possible no entry.
If you own the home your self, replace all exterior doors and door frames with steal frames. Metal doors and metal frames are extremely difficult to kick in.
Next are the windows. Keep all windows locked on every floor! A thief can easily climb up to a second story window and open it. Next, make your windows break proof. Some fire paranoid people will say don't do this, but home thief is much more common than breaking a window and jumping out of it during a fire. There are several security films that you can apply to a window that can make it withstand repeated attempts to smash it in with a hammer. Please note, this is EVERY window. Don't think a thief will shimmy in a busted garage door glass... These people are scum of the earth.
If you have a garage door, make sure the door opener opener is not using a common opening system. I don't know too much about garage security, so do some research.
Buy a doorbell camera. Make sure they can see it. This also helps great with UPS.
Finally, stick some home security stickers around your house. Make sure they're of real security companies. Even if you don't have service, a thief isn't going to pick your house if its difficult to get in, and the neighbor's is easier.
2) Securing your PC.
Once a thief is in your home, there isn't really much you can do. The main thing is, you have to make getting what they want so difficult that it'll take longer than 5 minutes. Easily frustrated, thieves are on a clock, and will just grab the easy to get stuff and run.
IF you have a laptop, this means one of those security cables. Although a decent wire cutter (which some thieves will have with them) will slice through them with ease. So with that in mind, unless you keep your laptop in a anchored safe, it's gone. Get insurance. Ditto with video game consoles, video games, etc.
The PC is a little different beast. Short of having a complete anchored rack cabinet with locks, there are two things you can do (one of which I currently do, the other I will pro
My experience with homeowners' insurance is that once the deductible is met, the amount paid per item is usually *way* more than the amount you could have conceivably sold it for on eBay. You might not walk away with a brand new item for free (if the item is more than a year old), but unless you're broke & living paycheck to paycheck, you'll walk away from the transaction feeling like you got an even better deal than the thief.
After Hurricane Wilma, there was *unbelievable* large-scale de-hoarding of old/broken electronic gear once people realized they could use it as an excuse to cash in on ancient hardware by claiming it as a storm loss (hardware that was almost zero-value to begin with by virtue of BEING in a box in the garage/shed/back porch, but collectively worth thousands as an insurance claim... and that's not even *counting* the outright fraud that occurred (things that magically ended up in the 'damaged' pile, despite surviving the storm just fine). Or things that had NEGATIVE value, like a half-dozen non-HD CRT TVs and monitors piled on a back porch when the storm hit that ended up getting the homeowner $200-500 apiece.
The one area where insurance will really fuck you is with new cars (since most cars instantly lose 25% of their value the INSTANT you take ownership). The smart thing to do with new cars is to take advantage of zero-down low-interest financing, then drag your feet after the accident until the insurance agrees to pay off the entire loan balance. Eventually, they WILL, because every day you delay costs them a hundred bucks for storage, administration, and your rental car... eventually, they'll give in just to close your case. By extension, the worst thing you can possibly do is buy a brand-new car with a large down-payment... if you get into an accident within a year, they'll totally fuck you over. Insurers LOVE to declare any accident where airbags deploy as a 'total loss', because the scrap value of its remaining parts is more than they'd otherwise have to spend on repair. In many cases, the aggregate value of your destroyed car's parts to a scrapyard *exceeds* the amount the insurance will offer to pay you.
If you have an SSD, and want to add a HDD, and just want to keep it in sync periodically, and you're running Linux... consider checking out MD raid1 using "write-mostly" on the HDD. For example: http://tansi.info/hybrid/
Using that, almost all reads will go to the SSD, and writes will go to both. It was originally added for mirroring over a (slow) network interface, which you could also add as a 3rd mirror if you prefer.
Before someone else says it, a mirror is not a backup. If you, or someone else using your computer, or through some program error, or through a virus/bug/etc, delete data, that deletion will sync to the mirror as quickly as you have it set to do so and you won't have a copy of it, unless you add some form of versioning or backup.
I'm sure everyone has their own preferences, but if you're starting from just your primary drive, and it's your personal computer (as opposed to work), then I'd recommend adding redundancy and backups in the following order of priority:
1. Offsite backup your most precious files. There are a TON of solutions for this. You can keep your file list short and limit it to small-ish files (ie. don't back up your DVD collection in this backup set, even if you consider it important). Possible solutions would include dropbox, crashplan, google drive, sync.com, spideroak, tresorit, mega, etc.
2. Local redundancy/mirror. This is the bit you're talking about. If I loose a drive due to hardware failure, I want to keep going ASAP, and this is the best way to do that.. just make sure you test it and can move over to it and back.
3. Local large/full backups. These can go to an external drive or two. Grab an external HDD with USB 3 that's plenty big (just get the biggest you can find within your budget - maybe a 4tb?). What software to use to make the backup... that's tricky, but there's lots of viable options, and a lot of it depends on how much effort you are able to put in up front. A lot of what this backs up will be fairly useless - do you really need a copy of all your OS files and game files and stuff you can just re-download later (and probably will, if you do need to do a completely rebuild)? Probably not, but just grab everything so you don't miss anything later on.
4. Offsite those full backups. Use multiple external drives. Take at least one offsite periodically. Take it to work, or a friends place, or a storage facility, or safe deposit box.
FWIW, crashplan can be used for all but #2 above. I don't work there; just a happy customer. It's free to back up to a local drive, or to another computer of your own (or friend/family/work).