How To Track Your Stolen Laptop For Free
A laptop is a lot of thingsits a mobile entertainment center
, a portal to the web, and a way to get work done away from home. More than anything, though, its a freakin-expensive piece of hardware that you absolutely do not want to lose.
Of course, the best way to keep your laptop is to not get it stolen in the first place. But if you do, you can be prepared to try and track it down. Plenty of companies are more than happy to charge you a recurring fee for this sort of protection, but you can actually get it for free. A software package called Prey allows you to remotely monitor your stolen laptop, retrieving screenshots, webcam pictures, and Wi-Fi hotspot information that you (and the police) can use to track down your property. Its open source, its free, and well show you how to use it.
Prey is a lightweight application that will assist you in finding a misplaced laptop should it get stolen. It is open source, multiplatform and totally free to use.
The idea behind Prey is quite straightforward. The software runs silently in background, wakes up at regular intervals and checks a particular URL to see if it should trigger the missing state, gather traces and send out a report. In checking the URL, the software looks for a 200 response from the page. If the response is there, the software goes to sleep again.
There are two approaches to using Prey. You can either have Prey+Control Panel, where you manage configuration and device state through a web page, and all of Preys are sent to this page. This is the easier, generally recommended approach.
The second option is to use Prey Standalone, where the reports go directly do your inbox, and in case of a missing laptop you have to generate the URL manually that will trigger Preys alarms. You will also need to configure the various modules yourself. This is the advanced approach.
Naturally, Prey needs an active internet connection at all times to work. If the connection is missing, the software will silently attempt to connect to the first available WiFi hotspot and raise the alarm.
Configuring Prey is not difficult at all When you run it for the first time, the configurator will prompt you to configure device for first use.
1. Make a Guest Account in Windows
In Windows, Prey runs as a service. Unfortunately, that means that its tracking abilities will only kick in when a thief logs into a user account on your computer. A truly sophisticated criminal would know to never do this, but were looking to provide protection against your average thug, not Ethan Hunt.
So the thug has to be able to log into an account. Youve got two options: First, you could remove the password from your primary account (which for safety reasons should never be the administrative account). That leaves your data exposed, so we recommend the second optioncreating a password-unprotected guest account.
Creating a guest account is easyjust open the Start Menu, then right-click Computer and select Manage. In the Local Users and Groups tab you can right-click and create a new account (above).
2. Install Prey
Now, log in to your new guest account, and download the Prey installer from www.preyproject.com. Run the installer, and when you get to the end, choose to configure Prey now. The first thing youll need to decide is how you want to manage Prey (below). You can choose to use the online control panel, or to set it up in stand-alone mode. There are a few drawbacks to the online control panel (you can only store 10 reports at once online, for one), but we think the convenience outweighs any limitations. Select the control panel method and youll be asked to create an account.
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How to Track Your Stolen Laptop for Free
Posted 06/01/2011 at 12:08pm | by Alex Castle
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Using Prey, youll have the upper hand over thieves
A laptop is a lot of thingsits a mobile entertainment center, a portal to the web, and a way to get work done away from home. More than anything, though, its a freakin-expensive piece of hardware that you absolutely do not want to lose.
Of course, the best way to keep your laptop is to not get it stolen in the first place. But if you do, you can be prepared to try and track it down. Plenty of companies are more than happy to charge you a recurring fee for this sort of protection, but you can actually get it for free. A software package called Prey allows you to remotely monitor your stolen laptop, retrieving screenshots, webcam pictures, and Wi-Fi hotspot information that you (and the police) can use to track down your property. Its open source, its free, and well show you how to use it.
1. Make a Guest Account in Windows
In Windows, Prey runs as a service. Unfortunately, that means that its tracking abilities will only kick in when a thief logs into a user account on your computer. A truly sophisticated criminal would know to never do this, but were looking to provide protection against your average thug, not Ethan Hunt.
So the thug has to be able to log into an account. Youve got two options: First, you could remove the password from your primary account (which for safety reasons should never be the administrative account). That
HP HSTNN-LB11 battery leaves your data exposed, so we recommend the second optioncreating a password-unprotected guest account.
Creating a guest account is easyjust open the Start Menu, then right-click Computer and select Manage. In the Local Users and Groups tab you can right-click and create a new account (above).
2. Install Prey
Now, log in to your new guest account, and download the Prey installer from www.preyproject.com. Run the installer, and when you get to the end, choose to configure Prey now. The first thing youll need to decide is how you want to manage Prey (below). You can choose to use the online control panel, or to set it up in stand-alone mode. There are a few drawbacks to the online control panel (you can only store 10 reports at once online, for one), but we think the convenience outweighs any limitations. Select the control panel method and youll be asked to create an account.
The only other setting you may want to change locally is to tell your computer to automatically connect to in-range Wi-Fi hotspots. This may help Prey send you reports, even if the perp doesnt mean to connect to the Internet.
3. Get Reports
The unthinkable has happened! Your laptop has been pilfered! (Or, you just want to test out Prey). Its time to log in to the control panel and have a look around. In the control panel at Preyproject.com, there are a number of reporting options you can set, but the most important is at the top, marked Missing. If your laptop
HP 447649-251 battery is stolen, toggle this option as soon as possible to tell Prey to start sending reports. You can also increase the frequency of sent reports, but remember that the free version of Prey stores only 10 reports at a time, so if youre not going to be able to retrieve the reports over a few hours, you might want to set a longer interval. Beyond that, all the options are pretty straightforwardthey allow you to keep track of networking and geolocation information (above), so you can find your laptop, and to track webcam activity and which programs the thief uses (below), so you can identify them to the police.
With all the settings in place, Prey works unobtrusively and will keep the system traceable in theft events. The software offers quite a few features, including:
Geo-location Aware (New feature)
WiFi auto-connect
Lightweight
Modula Architecture
Powerful Report System
Messaging/Alert System
Full Auto Updater
Prey is multiplatform, which means it would work with all operating systems, including Windows (all versions), Linux, Mac OS X. It runs discretely hence I was not able to verify its memory signature, but the software
HP HSTNN-I46C battery barely leaves any effects on a system. We tested Prey on Windows 7 32-bit OS.
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