Have you ever lost your laptop? If not just imagine that one day your laptop is no longer in your possession. Now thanks to Adeona ( a tracking software) you can track your laptop in case it gets lost or stolen. This software was developed here at the University of Washington by Ph.D. students and faculty members from Computer Science and Engineering. This is an open source software package.
For more information visit Adeona’s webpage: http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/
This is an awesome idea!
A couple of years ago, our house was broken into and one of the things taken was my laptop. Fortunately, exactly a week before I’d started running full hard drive backups at midnight, so I was well-covered (the thieves unplugged the external drive and threw it on the floor). But the idea that all my data was in someone else’s hands was very unnerving and I would have loved to catch the crooks red-handed.
I love the fake pictures on the site of laptop thieves. Very creepy. But wonderful idea. I’ve downloaded the software. Just hope I’ll never have to use it.
Before moving to UW, I had my car broken into Miami and my laptop and valuables stolen. Total damage = $3,000. The heartbreaking aspect was that I hadn’t backed up my laptop so ALL my photos, portfolio, and documents were stolen. I looked into laptop-monitoring software but haven’t taken the leap — Adeona is promising due to its open-source, free usage, and I like how its in continual development.
Lesson to the wise: backup, backup, backup. I’m going to learn how to back up files via remote server, portable hard drive.
I wish I had this on my MacPro last winter when someone broke out the window of my car and stole not only my laptop but my entire briefcase. The timing couldn’t have been worse: I had been at a job interview that day and my entire portfolio was in that briefcase, too.
I was able to give the police the serial number of my laptop within minutes of it being stolen, but it never was found.
I checked out the Adeona site, and read everything I could find–it seems pretty cool. However, as it is still in beta, I’m nervous about downloading it into my (new) MacPro. It’s great that it’s being developed by UW and it’s free–so I would appreciate reassurance from someone more tech savvy than myself that it won’t stalk me and my laptop in ways not yet unanticipated.
I now have a great Lacie external hard drive to back up my stuff– inexpensive insurance, at least for the contents.
I installed Adeono the other day. The green light on my MacBook’s iSight camera comes on every now and again as it takes a picture of me, just in case I turn out to be a thief.
I’ve snooped a bit but can’t find the images anywhere on my hard drive, so I assume they are encrypted in some way. I was just curious if random shots of me working on my laptop could be any worse than what’s on my driver’s license.
I got this from their website:
Unfortunately, with current proprietary tracking systems users sacrifice location privacy. Indeed, even while the device is still in the rightful owner’s possession, the tracking system is keeping tabs on the locations it (and its owner) visit. Even worse, with some commercial products, even outsiders (parties not affiliated with the tracking provider) can “piggy-back” on the tracking system’s Internet traffic to uncover a mobile device user’s private information and/or locations visited.
Adeona has three main properties:
* Private: Adeona uses state-of-the-art cryptographic mechanisms to ensure that the owner is the only party that can use the system to reveal the locations visited by a device.
* Reliable: Adeona uses a community-based remote storage facility, ensuring retrievability of recent location updates.
* Open source and free: Adeona’s software is licensed under GPLv2. While your locations are secret, the tracking system’s design is not.
The Mac OS X version also has an option to capture pictures of the laptop user or thief using the built-in iSight camera and the freeware tool isightcapture. Like your location information, these images are privacy-protected so that only the laptop owner (or an agent of the owner’s choosing) can access them.