I thought of this years ago..... Stolen laptop tracking

[RickM]

I should have gotten off my azz and patented it! (Actually it's not LoJack technology but god knows who wrote the article)

"Gateway Brings LoJack Technology to Laptops"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20050809/tc_nf/37706


"...small software client that resides on the hard drive of the host computer. Once activated, it sends a homing signal to a monitoring center and reports its location using any Internet connection.

In theory, Computrace resembles the auto industry's device, said Bryan Sherlock, public relations manager for Gateway. "The only difference is that when a car is stolen, the authorities are called and the device is activated and tracked," he explained. "With notebooks, it takes the perpetrator to log in to the Web for activation to begin. Once this occurs, data is erased and the authorities are notified to their location and apprehended." "

[HardDrive]

Well that a nice theory, but in practice it will only catch the biggest idiots, or the poor sucker who bought the computer.

After you rip through the drive for personal info, any compotent thief would format the drive.

And moreover, IP address tracking does not give you that kind of resolution. You can pretty quickly track it to a city, and you can find the ISP, but if its someone like comcast, locating that individual ID could take some time. And if they only use public access points...forget it. Its a wild goose chase.

Still better than nothing.

If they had any real nuts they would make it hardware based.

[RickM]

Actually, my idea had the tracking/beacon program living in non-volatile / non-flash capable memory...perhaps the ROM/BIOS (type) area. To be honest I'd be surprised if Computrace put this program in a vunerable area on the drive.....?

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Laptops have gotten so cheap they're practically not even worth stealing anymore. . .