Gps for misplaced laptop?

Does this allow you to track it yourself or do you have to go to police to do it?

f/fgeorge wrote:

This is one called "computrace"

Get a Clapper (advertised every Christmas on cable TV), wire it to an auto horn you pick up at NAPA and bolt the whole assembly it to the back of your notebook.

When you lose your computer, clap your hands twice and the horn will sound--- leading you right to it. Also consider attaching a xenon strobe to the Clapper so it will flash too.

Pat

The commercial products only work when connected to the internet. The idea is that the thief will try to connect to the internet thus disclosing its general location. However, that doesn't always work if the laptop is protected by a power on password. The thief never bothered to even try using the laptop. Even if the laptop contained a GPS receiver, the laptop would need to connect to the internet to reveal it's location (unless you want to also install a packet radio or cell phone xmitter).

In order for a GPS to work as an anti-theft device, it would need to be internally installed. Externally installed GPS receiver can simply be removed, shielded or unplugged. That means a MiniPCI GPS card installed in place of the dialup modem with some kind of antenna in the lid. I couldn't find any such MiniPCI cards with Google. If you find a MiniPCI GPS card, I would be interested.

It might also be possible to hide a USB GPS inside the laptop, but the one's I've torn apart offer few opportunities for concealment. Methinks that's what preventing deployment of GPS based anti-theft solutions.

If you're planning to use radio for the return link, you might want to get a ham license and look into APRS:

Incidentally, I invented a somewhat effective laptop anti-theft device. It's mercury tilt switch, timer, battery and Sonalert beeper. A tiny hidden on-off switch turns it off when necessary. The tilt switch is setup so that it fires off the Sonalert when the laptop base is held in position other than horizontal. Pick it up off the table and the Sonalert goes off after a short delay. Unless the thief wants to carry it away holding it horizontally and open, the Sonalert will scream its head off. I've built a few of these for friends and have found them to be fairly effective. Unfortunately, the general reaction of the thief is panic and two laptops have been trashed when they dropped the laptop and ran.

Clever. Much as I'd prefer not to have my laptop trashed, I'd also rather have it broken and in my possession than in the hands of a thief.

And the laptop must be operated outside, so it can get a GPS fix. 8*)

After having mine stolen, with the undamaged lock left behind, I looked into products for my new laptop. As Jeff notes, they all require internet access to report back to the mother ship. Some of them bury this a little better than others, claiming to survive a disk format and reload of software. I won't go into that ;-)

I thought Kensington made some clever alarmed cable, but I see that the alarm only goes off if someone cuts the cable. No need for that, obviously, in my case. And their "replacement warranty" is only if the cable fails. Nothing at all said about the ability of thieves to simply pick the lock and walk away.

Will it withstand dunking (in a container of water)? That's how thieves commonly defeat commercial alarm products.

Notebook Guardian Ultra by PC Guardian ($60 retail), which has a patented tamper-resistant locking mechanism and an extra strong cable, is generally considered to be the best notebook computer security device.

An advert in the local paper.

Barry ===== Home page

Don't forget the automotive battery charger - most NAPA horns don't work very long at mains voltage (120 VAC in the USA), and you may miss seeing the puff of smoke.

Nah, just strap the laptop to the back of a Rottweiler. With a little training, the dog will act as a workstand for the computer, and will come when called. Tends to reduce the risk of theft too. If you can't afford to buy a new Rotty. see the friendly re-cycling center (known by names like RSPCA, SPCA, or HSA) and get a slightly used one (or a suitable substitute) for a much lower acquisition cost.

Old guy

(This isn't practical, but would be "interesting".)

Years ago, I read about a hardware approach to dynamic DNS. At the time, I thought it was really cool. It was just a little box with two ethernet jacks. All the drivers were hardcoded in the hardware. Plug any internet feed into one ethernet jack and after getting it's IP's, it dialed the dynamic DNS service (it was $50/year), and their DNS servers assigned your domain to the dynamic IP. The other ethernet jack was used for whatever you are using it with.

Maybe something like this exists now that could be small enough to hide in a laptop, and with enough work (get out the dremel and spare cables), you could "replace" the built-in ethernet with this box. (Yep, it would be a major PITA!)

So, when they replace the OS, you'd still be able to ping the thing easily should someone plug it into their internet connection.

Tie that into some sort of "Wake-On-Internet" function ---- wired to explosives!

Someone steals your laptop? Just wake for them to connect to the internet and then blow 'em up.

(Of course, you'd probably be blowing up an innocent who bought the laptop from a palm shop though.)

I had my laptop stolen (bashed in rear window on my pickup truck). The laptop was recovered by the Sheriff and identified as mine by the bios sign on screen. However, to go beyond that requires that one type in a bios password. This stopped the thieves so they spent their efforts trying to get it to boot from the floppy and the cdrom. Unfortunately, they were too stoned, wired, or hyped up to do anything better than destroy both the floppy drive and cdrom drive.

It my laptop had been equiped with a GPS locator device, it would have done nothing because the cuprits could not connect to the internet. Bad idea, methinks.

They wouldn't need to dunk it in water. The device is simply tossed into the laptop bag or hidden in one of the numerous pockets the bag vendors seem to think the customer require so that they can lose adapters, disks, connectors, parts, cables, and other junk. The mercury switch is home made out of chemistry glass tubing and is easily broken. Lots of ways to defeat the device.

The key to success is that the thief does not know that it's there. The device has successfully stopped a theft in progress at the airport and 3 attempts at a hotel checkin counter. The ones that were dropped were at a local coffee shop. I think it stopped 2 or 3 attempts. I could probably build it into the laptop, but that's too much work. Since it contain mercury, the EPA wants a permit which I'm told is difficult to obtain (I haven't tried).

According to the web page: Heavy duty cable The thicker cable holds up against ordinary wire cutters.

I can cut it in 10 seconds with a battery operated Dremel tool and an abrasive cutoff disk. I've demonstrated this using bicycle cables and locks at one meeting. Wrapping the Dremel tool in foam or padding really cuts down on the noise but speed is sufficient to cut and run.

A friend told me an interesting story (that may not be true). One of her coworkers had her laptop and laptop bag stolen. Inside the bag was also her cell phone. She asked the police to ask her cell provider to see if they could get a position fix on the cell phone. She knew it could be done because her husband works on the technology. However, the police and cell provider either refused to try or claimed it couldn't be done. Meanwhile, cell phones are being used to measure traffic speed (and by implication, location).

it were possible, then all that would be needed would be to leave a functional unactivated cell phone in the laptop bag with a known ESN number.

Such traps are against the law. You could easily be judged a terrorist.

When I was much younger (and dumber), I used to buy surplus WWII electronics and convert them for ham radio use. One day, we dragged home a WWII IFF (indentification friend or foe) transponder that still had the thermit charge installed. My parents called the police and I got to watch the L.A. bomb squad do their thing. When I expressed my displeasure at not seeing the bomb detonate, my parents advised me that burning down the house was not a great idea. This was not my first experience in Learn By Destroying(tm).

I've advised my customers to purchase laptops with removeable hard disk drives. When travelling, seperate the drive from the laptop. If the laptop gets stolen, the data is safe. This worked very nicely for one customer that had their laptop mysteriously disappear from a locked hotel room.

Note: USB external drives would also work, but Windoze makes it rather difficult to seperate the data from the programs. My personal thanks to all the moronic programmers that put their customers data under the "Program Files" directory tree.

As for dropping the laptop, I have a Panasonic M-34 Toughbook.

local telco and some of my customers have a Toughbook CF-29. case with rubber edges. Everything shock mounted. Built like a tank. I haven't intentionally tried to drop the laptop, but it sure looks like it would survive a fairly hard drop. It also has built in GPS and CDMA phone options, which might be useful for tracking the laptop if stolen. However, I haven't played with these so I don't know if they can be used for anti-theft.

Ouch. These options are expensive:

$830 for the Verizon CDMA option and $440 for the GPS options. It also appears that the cellular and GPS options are mutually exclusive. A typical CF-29 laptop is about $3,600.

And I would suspect that many laptops (as another poster mentioned) are stolen with the locks intact. Both Dells I've had feel as if a determined person could simply rip the lock out of the side of the case. It would leave a gaping hole in the case - which would clearly tell a prospective buyer they were getting a hot laptop, but I'm sure that's OK with many buyers for the right price. I can't be the only person who owns a laptop that is strictly used as a desktop system.

No. I demonstrated it on a typical cheap bicycle cable lock. It was a steel cable about 1/4" in diameter and quite heavy.

The PC Guardian cable is .3125 dia galvanized steel as 6 bundles of 37 strands with a steel core. That will probably require more than my typical 10 seconds to cut, but not much more. If I really wanted the laptop, I would probably attack what looks like a typical aluminum Nyco-press cable sleeve clamp on the end loop. The cutoff disk will probably clog and bog, but a rotary saw blade will go through the aluminum like butter.

Try the Dremel cutoff tool on some stainless rigging cable (off the vessel) and see how easily and cleanly it cuts. I haven't used bolt cutters in years. Too much work.

Anyway, cable security devices make lots of sense with laptops that are used primarily as a desktop replacement. I know of several laptops where the smash and grab thief had simply bashed in the window, reached inside, grabbed the laptop, and ran off. A cable would have stopped them. However, the bulk of my customers loose theirs in airports, hotels, coffee shops, and in their vehicles. The laptops are usually unattended or inside a laptop bag where a cable would be inconvenient. Granted, my mercury switch trick also wouldn't do much for many such situations.

Mercury is considered dangerous cargo for carriage on board aircraft so you mat get pinged on that alone .

The regular version or the Ultra version? The latter is considerably more resistant to cutting than the former, and I'm skeptical that a Dremel could do the job anywhere near that fast.