Tracking Down Stolen Laptops

from the sounds-like-a-good-system dept

There are products out there that act like a lojack system for your laptop, where you can ping the laptop and a GPS system will tell you where it is. This seems like a bit of overkill for a fairly remote possibility. Instead, this system described in The Register sounds a lot more reasonable. It's just a piece of software that can be used to track where the laptop is logging on from. So, if you report your laptop stolen, the next time it accesses the internet, it sends along the IP address, which can then be tracked down. Interestingly, the article points out that this system was used to track down a fraud. Someone sold a school's laptop, and then reported it stolen in order to keep the money. When the laptop next logged on, it was found and the whole scam came crashing down.

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