Computer Stolen: Way to find it?

[Michael Silverbane]

So... My laptop was stolen today... from my house... while I slept in it...

Does anyone here know any way that they might be able to be found, assuming that they go online with it, but that it has no special technology or software onboard to aid in such a task?

Also, is there any software or technology that I should get for my next laptop to ensure that if it is also stolen, that I can find out who has possession of it?

Thanks
silver

 

[Bad Paper]

Craigslist and eBay.

There are a couple of technologies for recovering stolen laptops (that you need to get before the thing is stolen, yes). I think Lojack has a laptop-service.

And there is a tiny invisible program I've seen--I'm blanking on the name--that works for Macs. It uses the built-in iSight to snap a pic every few minutes and upload it to a server that you can access, and also gives logon information, and maybe keystroke logging. I read about it a while ago, sorry for the vagueness.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

If it was preconfigured to use a dial-up account, the ISP could probably help trace it (from a technical standpoint, anyway). Other than that, you're probably boned. Hopefully you filed a police report, as it has most likely already made its way to the nearest pawn shop.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Right... The police have long-since been involved, but their outlook on the recovery of something like that was pretty dismal... So I was looking for other possible ways that might be out there.

There's about a million pdfs that I have to buy again... Crap.

Later
silver

 

[seans23]

Craigslist and eBay.

that was post #1000 for Bad Paper. Woohoo!

 

[Thanee]

There's about a million pdfs that I have to buy again... Crap.

Maybe you can contact the PDF seller (RPG-Now, DriveThru, or whatever), send them a scan of the police paper thingie where it says that your laptop is stolen, and ask them if they have logged your purchases and can make you download them again.

Worth a try.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I think I've still got the email receipts for a lot of them, so it won't actually cost that much to replace them. There's hours and hours of downloading to do to get that stuff back, though... And an as yet undetermined amount of un-backed-up homebrew stuff that is just basically gone. Bleah.

I sure wish that I could get on CM from work, so that I could vent properly.

Later
silver

 

[Alan Shutko]

There's about a million pdfs that I have to buy again... Crap.

While this is fresh in everyone's minds, here's a public service announcement on backups. As much as it sucks to lose the machine (been there!) it would hurt less if you didn't lose everything on it.

Right now there are a number of online services that offer backup services. They're not as good as local backups (slower, certainly!) but they are really, really convenient. I use http://www.jungledisk.com which backs me up to Amazon's S3 service, and it costs me about $5 to store 10GB a month. It just uploads stuff in the background incrementally.

 

[Psionicist]

If the thief is stupid there are possibly some ways to find the computer. If there's a commercial anti virus program on the computer with some kind of auto update feature that runs regularly, there is a chance the anti virus vendor will know the thieves IP address the next time it runs. This is because the update server only sends you updates if you have a valid and unique serial number. This is true for all "phone home" applications with a serial number or something that can be linked to yourself.

Assuming the thief didn't wipe the drive and there's a anti virus program and you have configured it for auto updates, contact the AV vendor, give them your serial and with a little luck they will give you an IP.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Ah ha! I do have an automatically updating virus scanner. That's something.

Also there's been a new development. Along with the laptop, they took my 360... And then they logged on to xbox live (about an hour ago). I'm hoping that the xbox live people can tell me the ip from which they connected.

Later
silver