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Security

Laptop Anti-Theft Devices 237

Posted by michael from the cheaper-than-hiring-guido-and-sal dept.
mathin writes: "The NYTimes has an interesting article about laptop theft 'alarms' and services to help track down your laptop if it's swiped." Laptops are a lot like bicycles: if you have a 50-pound laptop, it doesn't need a lock.
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Laptop Anti-Theft Devices More

Laptop Anti-Theft Devices

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  • Nice if... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    MI5 brought a few trackers so they can find where their pissed agents left them...

  • Reactive Loss Prevention (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Everach ( 559166 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @10:35AM (#3167834)
    The majority of the companies I work with use capital insurance policies to cover the cost of replacing stolen equipment. With the proliferation of anti-theft devices, will insurance companies take the automobile route and provide discounts for using them? Or will they begin to require such devices to provide coverage at all?
    • they will rarely require. if a company doesnt have them, their rates are hiked way up.

      Insurance companies tend not to deny coverage to people (except the really bad drivers). they like to have people, and charge them A LOT

  • Mine was stolen (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EnVisiCrypt ( 178985 ) <[groovetheorist] [at] [hotmail.com]> on Friday March 15, 2002 @10:35AM (#3167836)
    A couple of years ago, I bought a brand new laptop. I went into a store for a couple of minutes and left my month old laptop sitting on the seat of my car, door unlocked (stupid, I know), knowing I would only be gone for a couple minutes.

    When I got back home, I tried to boot up and nothing happened after the fan kicked on. After a couple of minutes of jiggling the power cord wire, I opened the case and found that my processor was stolen along with my two 64MB ram units. Someone had bothered to open it up, take the stuff, and close it again

    That is definitely a situation in which tracking would not have helped.
  • if you have a 50-pound laptop, it doesn't need a lock.

    If your laptop is 50 pounds, it's not really a laptop, is it?!

  • If I'm in public somewhere, I'm not leaving my laptop unattended.
    I should probably be surprised that people would do this,
    but I work Tech Support, so I deal with people
    all day, and know how stupid they are.

    • If I'm in public somewhere, I'm not leaving my laptop unattended.

      actually what I do whenever I get a new laptop (this is my third, none stolen, just upgrades) is to remove the hard drive retaining screw; the drive is usually in some kind of carrier that is connected to the rest of the laptop by a single screw. Whenever I go somewhere and I don't want to lug the laptop with me, I pop out the drive. Laptops are easily replaced and are insurable. Backups I have but it's still a pain in the ass and if I'm out for a few days the work isn't backed up. The data loss is far worse than the actual theft.

  • michael: (Score:4, Funny)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @10:39AM (#3167857) Homepage Journal
    50-pound computers are what we here in the industry call "desktops".

    - A.P.

  • The Information can be worth more than the laptop (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Schlemphfer ( 556732 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @10:40AM (#3167860) Homepage

    Pogue's article had some great things to say about the technology of tracking down stolen laptops. It would have been good to make the point that, many times, the information on the laptop is worth far more than the laptop itself.

    About 18 months ago Qualcomm's CEO had his laptop swiped [computerworld.com] during a conference. The laptop was thought to have all kinds of trade secrets. Losing a several-thousand dollar laptop was a trivial loss for the CEO. But shareholders were rightfully worried that Qualcomm's strategies for implementing CDMA rollout were now in the hands of rivals. To my knowledge, they never got the laptop back. And the theft was, I suspect, for the hard drive's trade secrets rather than for the actual laptop.

    • IBM has some pretty nice new security that allows for even the HDDs within laptops to be locked up, even when the HDDs are removed from the machine and put in another machine. Pretty nice for securing data, and would have been nice for the company to know that the data couldn't be accessed.
    • To make the obvious point, any company that issues laptops to its staff that may be used to store sensistive information but which don't use encryption as a matter of course needs its IT organisation's head examined.

      I'm not saying that this is necessarily easy to achieve in a way that the average meeting-going PHB finds usable but which his 13yr daughter can't crack in 5 minutes, but reasonable levels of protection are feasible.

      Of course, you have to rely on the PHB not writing down pass-phrases and leaving them plainly visible.

    • Do you really think that a CEO does anything with a laptop other than carry it around looking technical?
      It wouldn't be the first time.

      Anyways, I'm sure he was most distraught about losing his OutLook contact list. Which, of course, isn't the company standard, but that's what the CEO wanted to use.

  • "Laptops are a lot like bicycles: if you have a 50-pound laptop, it doesn't need a lock. "

    Well, I'm glad that I kept my Mac Portable, which weighs in at 21 pounds. Let's see some schmoe try to steal that...

  • they could implement something like this [cnn.com] into laptop security. I agree it would probably be a bit excessive, but you know as well as I do, that nobody else would ever try to take your notebook once word got around. Check out the video clip of it in action... I'm sure most if you /.er's out there have already seen it in action.
  • Id lock my 50 pound bike in Amsterdam if I was you.

    Gr /Dread

  • deterrants (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @10:44AM (#3167877) Journal
    The pcmcia card they mentioned is more of a deterrent than anything else. It is trivial to bypass, but is okay for a public place like a restaurant.

    this statistic was startling:

    As many as 30 percent of the stolen laptops are gone for good because they are never used to go online after being stolen.

    Never mind that If I had a system like that I would just wipe the drive to begin with. Of course, common crooks may not bother.

    • It's actually the same type of problems that people have recovering some stolen cars. A lot of times, they're parted out completely within a matter of hours, all that's left if/when it's finally recovered is an empty frame/unibody.

      I'm sure most people who steal laptops are more interested in selling parts than whole systems. It's much easier to track the machine in a coherent body than it would be a Hard drive here, and memory chip here.

  • NYT (Score:1)

    by ayeco ( 301053 )
    great, another NYTimes [slashdot.org] article.
  • or very sharp nails.

    a primitive but very effective anti-thefth device
  • I just Chain up a SilverBack Gorilla to my laptop. Ive never had a problem getting my laptop back.
  • Christ my monitor doesn't weigh 50 pounds. How's the gravity up there at the Geek Compound anyway?

  • Dude! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Romancer ( 19668 ) <romancer AT deathsdoor DOT com> on Friday March 15, 2002 @10:48AM (#3167899) Journal
    That has got to be the most easily comprimised password method ever!

    you: Tilt left - right - back to arm laptop, and leave...

    you : come back and tilt laptop right - back - left

    Person outside looking in sees you do this and comes in and takes your laptop, disarming it with your (super secret password tilt combo) while you feel secure cause you spent a hundred dollars on a security device.

    what a joke, that method shouldn't even exist, too many stupid users are gonna use it.
    • You have two other methods of locking it...clicking a desktop button or using a taskbar menu item (windows)

      What do you do for Linux laptops?
      • you should only have two!

        The third is utterly insane to have as an option for a security device.
        why not just have a voice password that you have to say in a loud articulate voice from five feet away.
      • What do you do for Linux laptops?

        A desktop button that calls cdetach, ssh-add -D, and xscreensaver.

    • Re:Dude! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by EricLivingston ( 162103 ) <ericNO@SPAMthelivingstons.org> on Friday March 15, 2002 @11:17AM (#3168053) Homepage
      Actually, I've tried it and it's EXTREMELY hard to duplicate the motions - the accelerometer inside is incredibly sensitive. I sat across from the CEO of Caveo who, right in front of me, armed the mechanism with a couple of tilts - a very simple motion password. We watched him do it a couple of times. I, and my companion, tried to duplicate that motion for several minutes and completely failed. You really don't have any idea how hard it is to duplicate exactly the motions of another's arms until you try.

      The sensitivity of the angles you tilt, for instance, is something like within 1 degree, and the acceleration parameters are also extremely precise (so, for instance, if you lift the laptop an inch or two while also tilting it, this counts).

      Surprisingly, it's actually NOT that difficult to duplicate your own motions - muscle memory is far more precise than I ever thought.

      But, really, until you try it you can't imagine how difficult it really it to duplicate even simple motion passwords.

      • Re:Dude! (Score:2, Funny)

        by Big Diluth ( 85300 )
        Then you realized you were holding an Etch A Sketch.


        Gosh, I'll bet you felt silly!



  • Osborne 1 computer :D

    http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/osborne/os bo rne.jpg

    Ive seen devices that has a button on your belt buckle and a battery on the case, if it walks, press the button on the bat belt.

    ZAAAAAAAAAAAP. Watch them wriggle in a pile of piddle shuddering and slobbering :D

    • Osborne 1 computer :D
      That was my first real PC! I still own two of them, and a Kaypro, and they still will boot faster than any current PC.

      The Osborne was the first "portable" (really, luggable) computer. The first with a built-in monitor (only 3" viewable, diagonally). The case was a from a portable sewing machine. But they weighed only 25 pounds!

      We didn't have or need anti-theft devices in those days. Most thieves didn't know what it was.
      • Yep! I didn't own one when they were still being sold new, but I bought a used one (and got a broken, second one thrown in free, to use for spare parts) at a used computer store in town, not *too* long after Osborne went out of business.

        What's pretty funny now (but was actually pretty useful at the time!) is the screen magnifier accessory I got with mine. It was a big square magnifying glass on a metal rod that velcro'd to the top of the Osborne, so it sat about 6 inches in front of the tiny monitor display. Presto, more readable screen!
  • One of the big issues here is the things that are on the hard drive rather than the actual physical laptop.

    I remember a few years back when me and a few friends were continuously scared of getting a knock on the door from the authorities, we had ideas to develop a device to entirely wipe the hard drive.

    Initially, this consisted of a coil of thick guage copper wire around the HD, which was in turn connected across the mains supply. Guaranteed to fuck over the HD big time.

    Problem was, that we never had the guts to put one round our main HD, because we knew that whatever mechanism used, it could get accidently turned on.

    We also worried about, if the police did turn up, how would we know whether it was a friendly visit or not, then wipe or HDs for no reason.

    All because of the anarchists cookbook and about 10 porn pictures.....
    • I remember a few years back when me and a few friends were continuously scared of getting a knock on the door from the authorities, we had ideas to develop a device to entirely wipe the hard drive.

      We also worried about, if the police did turn up, how would we know whether it was a friendly visit or not, then wipe or HDs for no reason.

      If you are that paranoid, then you would never assume that the police were showing up for a "friendly visit"... :)

  • The end of laptop theft as we know it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dipfan ( 192591 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @10:56AM (#3167930) Homepage
    Excellent news ... as we know, audio alarms and tracking bugs have totally eliminated theft in the automobile industry, and I imagine these devices will do the same for laptops.
  • User Name = aslashdotuser
    password = slashdot

  • Insturance (Score:4, Interesting)

    by swagr ( 244747 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @11:01AM (#3167959) Homepage
    True story:
    I was working in a corner of a cafe late at night when I guy came in, sat beside me, stuck a knife to my side and said "put the laptop in the bag".

    My laptop was locked to the table, but I gladly unlocked it in return for my safety.

    Anyway, insurance covered the loss.

    Also, I had a removable hard drive with all my work on it, and I pleaded with the thief to let me keep it, and he let me!

    So ultimately, I ended up with a newer machine, and a spare drive, and the thief ended up with a password protected laptop. Just goes to show, crime doesn't pay.

    • Re:Insturance (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Rogerborg ( 306625 )
      • I was working in a corner of a cafe late at night when I guy came in, sat beside me, stuck a knife to my side and said "put the laptop in the bag".

      I'll top that. Friend of mine came out of the University about 1am, and locked up behind him. Three guys grabbed him, showed him the knife and said "Play nice". They hailed a cab, put him in it, and said "Take us to your apartment," which he did. They then took him up, sat him on the floor, and carefully cleaned the place out, including his laptop (and the keys to the University), and made it utterly clear to him what would happen if he reported any of this. He said that it was a surreal experience, and the scariest thing was how utterly casual and bored they were, like they could not give a fuck how many people saw them, whether he shouted for help, or whether they knifed him or not. On the bright side, they did pay for the cab.

      • I ended up with a newer machine, and a spare drive, and the thief ended up with a password protected laptop. Just goes to show, crime doesn't pay

      Well, crime probably paid about $50, the price of a "good cosmetic condition, fails to boot" laptop on eBay, or at the local fence. And that's rather the point about laptop security: it doesn't matter how bad you make the proposition look, if someone decides to take your laptop (or cell phone, or anything else) they're going to do it. You will have to make the decision whether it's worth carrying something so valuable that you're prepared to risk your life protecting it. I think that you (and my friend) made the right decision. "Hero" tends to be a posthumous epithet, barring superior firepower and the opportunity and will to use it.

      The flipside of all this is: never, ever buy goods in a "too good to be true" deal from someone who's not keen to answer questions on where they came from, because more often that not, there's a victim in there somewhere. Are we all quite clear on that?

      • Your friend is full of it.
      • Three guys grabbed him, showed him the knife and said "Play nice". They hailed a cab, put him in it, and said "Take us to your apartment," which he did.
        These guys were obviously well-connected, given their total lack of concern about witnesses. I think the residents of this city have problems that are a lot more serious and basic than laptop theft!
        • I want to know what city/university this refers to, so I can avoid it like the plague.

          Three guys grabbed him, showed him the knife and said "Play nice". They hailed a cab, put him in it, and said "Take us to your apartment," which he did.

          These guys were obviously well-connected, given their total lack of concern about witnesses. I think the residents of this city have problems that are a lot more serious and basic than laptop theft!

          Agreed.

          An interesting statistic -- generally an attacker with a knife is much more likely to cut a victim to 'show he means business' than an attacker with a gun. Generally, people attacked by a gun-wielding assaliant are less likely to be injured.

          • Is this the obligatory "guns don't kill people" post? If so, thanks for doing it without the usual cliches.

            If there's any inference to be made here, I don't think it's that gun muggers have more self-discipline than knife muggers. It seems obvious to me that anybody who uses intentional injury as a form of communication would prefer a knife to a gun. Despite all the "just wing him" scenes in the movies, a shooter can't really control whether a gunshot is fatal. I don't know much about the professional standards in the your-money-or-your-life business, but unnecessary homicides would seem to be counterproductive. On the other hand, empathy is obviously not a professional qualificantion....

            • Is this the obligatory "guns don't kill people" post? If so, thanks for doing it without the usual cliches.
              You're welcome.

              For some real enlightenment, check out the statistics on the percentage of murder victims with cocaine in their bloodstream.

              If there's any inference to be made here, I don't think it's that gun muggers have more self-discipline than knife muggers.
              The unpopular inference is that firearms restrictions may actually increase the number of victims injured in these crimes.
              It seems obvious to me that anybody who uses intentional injury as a form of communication would prefer a knife to a gun. Despite all the "just wing him" scenes in the movies, a shooter can't really control whether a gunshot is fatal. I don't know much about the professional standards in the your-money-or-your-life business, but unnecessary homicides would seem to be counterproductive.
              According to the cops, such crimes are acts of desparation by addicts in withdrawal, so they are not entirely rational... but they also want an easy quiet crime that won't make the newspapers.

              Laptops are a popular target because they are easy to turn into cash, and often left unattended. This makes them more attractive than say, a purse, which may or may not contain items of value.

              • I certainly agree that crackheads (not cokeheads, crystal coke is an expensive, upscale drug; related thefts tend to be of the white-collar variety) are more dangerous in their own right than guns or knives. Mugging is always nasty, but given a choiced I'd rather be mugged by somebody whose behavior is predictable.

                Still, we weren't talking about street zombies with a declining brain cell count. We were talking about professional thieves carrying out carefully planned robberies.

                • I certainly agree that crackheads (not cokeheads, crystal coke is an expensive, upscale drug; related thefts tend to be of the white-collar variety)
                  A lot of "white collar crime" is committed to fund a "white collar drug habit", primarily coke. That includes a huge percentage of in-house corporate laptop shrinkage.
    • True story:
      I was working in a corner of a cafe late at night when I guy came in, sat beside me, stuck a knife to my side and said "put the laptop in the bag".

      My laptop was locked to the table, but I gladly unlocked it in return for my safety.

      You, sir, are a terrorist enabler!
  • I recently purchased a $2500 laptop (Toshiba 5105-S607) to use between work and home, as well as when I'm away from home. It's pretty powerful, so it also serves as a desktop replacement for my home machine.

    I can't understand why people will pay thousands of dollars for a piece of machinery, then carlessly leave it at a table or seat while they go off and do something else. Even if it's company equipment, somebody paid for that laptop. I think these are the same people who leave their car running with the keys in the ignition while they drop off their 3-day-late movie at Blockbuster, or run into store to grab a coke. It never hurts to be overly cautious.

    When I'm at work, I lock the laptop down with one of those 4-digit combo locks attached to a metal wire. I know that any person with an interest in my $2500 machine can come along with a pair of wire cutters and hack off the wire. Having the lock on there is to basically keep the honest people honest. When I leave for lunch I take off the combo lock and lock the laptop up in my drawer. When I'm done for the day I pack everything up and take it back home with me.

    Noise alarms are just annoying and don't really help, much like car alarms. When's the last time you ran towards an alarm, thinking to help overpower a thief? If anything, like the article says, the thief would just chuck the alarm card, or better yet feign embarassment while pretending it really is his/her laptop.

    Simply paying attention to your surroundings and taking that extra step to secure your laptop will often work better than more expensive options, which unfortunately might cause people to let down their guard.
  • It'd be neat if there was an embeddable tracking device available, that you could put in your laptop in case it is stolen. Just call this tracking company up and ask them where it is.

    I suppose some might consider that a privacy issue, but I don't think it would be if it's a service you could pay for.

    Just a thought.

  • IBM (Score:4, Informative)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @11:05AM (#3167984) Homepage
    IBM has the right idea. In some (all?) of their laptops, the main board and hard drive have passwords that can't be disabled or bypassed without major surgery. If you forget the password, tough, the subassembly must be replaced. If this was more common, laptops would be less attractive to thieves.
  • You can't ride a 50-pund laptop. 'Nuff said.
  • Here [slashdot.org] is a story on slashdot not long ago about a computer that was stolen and then recovered.

    With wireless being put on-chip, I don't think this will be a problem forever. There's too much marketing money at stake for companies not to know where you are all times.

    Use a pencil and paper! The handwriting recognition is great!

  • I mean, if I were going to steal a laptop, I don't think I would have any problem ejecting and ditching the card. And unless I knew what information was on it (and knew it was useful) I don't think I would even think twice about reformatting the drive. And if I did want the data off of it, then I'm sure it's only a matter of time before there is a way to crack it.
    • One thing to keep in mind is that a very large proportion of laptop thefts occur inside office buildings. I've worked at a couple of companies that have laptops "wander off" each year. Locking them down is great, but isn't practical if your company is one in which folks are carrying around their machines to conference rooms and each others' offices to collaborate.

      The scenario is this (based on several true stories): Somebody leaves their laptop in a conference room/another's office/their own cube, unlocked. A well-dressed stranger, perhaps present for a "meeting" wanders up, picks up the laptop, and proceeds to simply walk out, looking very proper and professional with the laptop under his arm. Don't forget, this could easily be an employee of the company stealing another employee's machine (which also happens quite a bit).

      Caveo technology is great for this scenario. Clearly if the PC is emitting a piercing alarm (I've heard it, and it is truly loud), the fellow would attract attention if he were walking towards the door. Similarly, were he to eject and toss the card, it still screams, leading everyone to do a quick "Where's my laptop" check at a minimum, and alerts the receptionist/folks around the door to take note of who is leaving, etc.

      I think this solution fits best into a corporate setting as a deterrent to inside-job theft, rather than a deterrant to somebody reaching into your car and grabbing your notebook (though, you'd have to think that many less savvy crooks would drop a notebook pretty quick if it started to wail and really did turn heads).

      • Similarly, were he to eject and toss the card, it still screams, leading everyone to do a quick "Where's my laptop" check at a minimum, and alerts the receptionist/folks around the door to take note of who is leaving, etc.

        Eject card, slide under nearest locked door. Or simply, eject card apply hammer. This thing is just a pcmcia card, how long will it chirp after I've broken it in two? If I'm an employee, I already know all the laptops have these cards so I might be able to eject/smash the card before it goes off.

        For this to be at all effective it would need to be built into the laptop and not easily removeable. Of all of the laptop anti-theft devices I think this is the most useless.

        • But again, I don't think you're envisioning the scenario completely. Think about it - I go into a conference room with a hammer (because it's unlikely I'm gonna find something like a hammer in a conference room). I then eject a pcmcia card which immediately sets off a very loud alarm and proceed to smash the card to pieces on the conference room table.

          You're telling me this would be surreptitious way to sneak out with the laptop? That this would not attract undue attention?

          Frankly, I'm pretty sure that simply letting the alarm go off (in an office that might have a couple of false alarms every few months) would be less noticable than somebody actually beginning to smash the card right in the middle of the conference room/cubicle land space. Consider also that for an office used to the sound of the alarm and it's de-activation (again, from testing and sporadic false alarms), a very abrubt, unnatural end to the alarm would raise some eyebrows.

          Any of the options you talk about would attract a great deal of attention in any office building I've ever worked in (including somebody walking around with a blaring PCMCIA card looking for a locked door to stick it under). The way employees and well-dressed strangers wander off with others' laptops is by looking completely normal - totally blending in and thus remaining invisible. Any of the approaches you talk about above immediately point out the perpetrator as not following normal behavior patterns.

        • Or simply, eject card apply hammer.

          Yeah, right. Like that won't attract the attention of the geek in the next cube:

          (shuffle shuffle) BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP BANG! BEEPBEEPFUCKBEEPBANG! BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBANGBANGBANG! (silence)
  • From the article:

    The Caveo card's execution is superb, but its concept isn't foolproof. For example, a thief (perhaps knowing how the card works) could simply eject the whining card and toss it into the Hudson.

    Wow...sounds really hard to get around! Once criminals know how the card works, it'd be quite easy to get around.

  • Laptops are a lot like bicycles: if you have a 50-pound laptop, it doesn't need a lock.

    What the hell are you talking about? If I have a 50 pound bicycle, that's too heavy to ride away?

    And 50 pounds of laptop is too heavy to lug away? Maybe 200 pounds, but sheesh I could carry 50 pounds under my arm (I am bigger and stronger than average, though). Not to mention a 50 pound laptop would probably have a handle.

    Oh wait, it's michael posting the story. Never mind.

  • "Laptops are a lot like bicycles: if you have a 50-pound laptop, it doesn't need a lock."

    On the contrary, they make great low power cluster nodes. Jusd leave yours here, I'll watch after it while your gone. ;-)

  • Missing the point (Score:3, Informative)

    by mikosullivan ( 320993 ) <miko@idocCOUGARs.com minus cat> on Friday March 15, 2002 @11:16AM (#3168044)
    A lot of people commenting on how various anti-theft devices won't help because they can be worked around are missing the point. Security is done in layers. You implement a variety of security measures to improve the odds catching different situations. So, the car-alarm style card in the laptop won't stop the person who sat and watched you tilt in your "passtilt", but it will inhibit the many, many potential thieves who simply walk by and see an unattended laptop.

    The best laptop-theft-prevention is staying with the computer. That may be where wearable computers have their best value. A computer around your belt with a glasses-style display won't be easily forgotten.

  • A few points (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @11:24AM (#3168096) Homepage
    1. Having an old/crap/50lbs laptop will only stop it from being stolen if there's an obviously better one sitting right next to it.
    2. When the alarm goes off, what's the first thing the thief is going to do? Better hope that your laptop can survive being hurled violently to the ground.
    3. If the thief doesn't throw your laptop away, are you going to chase them? If you think possession of your laptop is more important than your health, perhaps you need to evaluate why you feel that you need to carry something so valuable that it might get you killed.
    4. (A little aside about human nature) According to my friends in IS, most corporate owned laptops are stolen by employees. (Pop quiz: How many corporations want to collect metrics that say how crooked their employees are? It's simply recorded as unspecified theft, or even depreciation) My current employer actually has a tacit policy that laptops pass down the food chain until they reach a dark, quiet corner, then they slip out the back door. It's actually less hassle and cost to the company than trying to protect them, or for that matter trying to sell them on. Also, having confidential files on a stolen laptop is a lot less embarassing for the IS guys than having them found on a "wiped for resale" laptop. Very cynically enterprising of them.

    If you don't want your laptop stolen, don't ever let it get into a situation where it can be stolen, because (people being what they are) it will be. And if you think you absolutely can't live without your laptop, do yourself a favour and evaluate what you actually mean by that. Chances are you'll find it's simply not true.

  • PCPhoneHome [pcphonehome.com] has a product which claims to email "position data" regularly from your laptop (Any machine running Windows, MacOS, Linux, or PalmOS, they claim).

    Ignoring however they manage to provide this GPS in software, and how they manage to send email via a variety of possible transports (without being detectable at the OS level, they claim to run at a much lower level), they have one claim in particular that is mind-boggling:

    They have a couple of versions, the freeware version does everything above, and the $30 version claims that it can't be removed from a hard disk with "fdisk, low-level format, or format".

    I think they're pushing snake oil. If they actually do everything they claim to do, I'd love to find out how. Does anyone have any experience with them?
    • Maybe it's spyware. Maybe it "phones home" to _them_ with all your web use stats, and e-mail addresses on your system, all the while supposedly "protecting" you. PC Phone Home, indeed...
    • I commented on this recently in comp.sys.ibm-pc.storage.

      Actually they say nothing about low-level format on their site. Ordinary MS format for a hdd is a filesystem creation today, not like a floppy disk format. Usually only very little gets overwritten. Same with MS fdisk. Things are a little different with Linux.

      Basically they lie by omission. Doing a disk wipe (e.g. "cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda" in Linux) will likely remove their tool. But they never claim otherwise! They rely on people thinking that format = wipe, which is untrue for harddisks.

      The statement Cannot be removed by unauthorized parties even if they attempt to wipe the computer's hard drive using format or fdisk commands. is completely true, as a harddisk cannot be wiped with format or fdisk!

      Of course that is not the meaning most people will read into this.

  • Slight problem (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Beliskner ( 566513 )

    When you intend to leave your laptop unattended, if only for a moment, you can "arm" it in any of several ways: by clicking a button, by using a taskbar menu or, if the lid is closed, by tilting it to three particular angles in a specific sequence

    Slight problem that makes this useless - you have to remember to arm it, ie. your laptop is switched on, and the battery has not run dry. If you've got to remember to pick it up and hold it upside down you might as well just put it into hibernate mode, it saves power, and let the BIOS password deal with the thief.

    The *real* problem is that laptops are stolen when you turn your back for a second because you're thinking of something else (without thinking "I should engage the security device by going dancing with my laptop"). If you are going to walk away from the laptop then *take it with you* or use BIOS-protected APM.

    Even if it does work, the thief will know the alarm is activated so he'll pull out his gun and shoot you while he runs away. Or he might shoot you *before* he takes the laptop. I think I'll take the insurance payout instead ;-)

    • Beliskner writes:
      Even if it does work, the thief will know the alarm is activated so he'll pull out his gun and shoot you while he runs away. Or he might shoot you *before* he takes the laptop. I think I'll take the insurance payout instead ;-)
      That is bullshit. I used to hang out with Chicago cops -- "mugger shoots victim" is a rare story, and the truth is usually "mob hit disguised as mugging misreported by media".

      Shooting people is noisy, messy, and tends to get a lot of investigative attention.

      The average thief is some crackhead looking for an easy score so he can get his next fix, or the twichty low-level manager in the next cubicle over funding his cocaine habit (or covering his E-trade margin account losses).

      In either case, snatch-and-grab robbers tend to be unarmed, and even armed robbers don't want to shoot you, they want an easy quiet getaway from a 'property crime' that likely won't even result in a police report.

      It's a big step from "burglar" or "mugger" to "murderer". Even in the worst of the projects, few people are so far out of it that they will take that step for the hundred bucks your laptop will gain them.

      ... you might as well just put it into hibernate mode, it saves power, and let the BIOS password deal with the thief.
      ...
      If you are going to walk away from the laptop then *take it with you* or use BIOS-protected APM.
      The thief isn't going to care about the BIOS password, he just wants to hand it off to his fence for fifty or a hundred bucks. The fence will see that it powers up, then add it to a bulk lot of other laptops, which will go to a wholesaler that knows how to get around BIOS passwords.

      Don't believe me? Buy your local beat cop a pint and ask him yourself.

  • I read an article [wired.com] about a guy who used some remote administration package to recover his sister's stolen Macintosh. I can accomplish similar things with a remote login (ssh, of course) on my Linux box, but only if I have the IP address.

    This gave me an idea for protecting my wife's laptop.

    I edited the ifup script to e-mail the IP address to me. I want the thief to use the computer for a long period of time, and use it repeatedly, so I can track them. There is an autologin feature available for gdm and kdm, so I enabled it (I didn't know it could be used as a security feature). I also put some familiar looking icons on the desktop so the thief will feel at home and use the machine frequently, and hopefully they will click the big "connect to internet" icon.

    Of course, I usually just use this to eject the CD-ROM when my wife is using the computer. I think it's funny, but I think she rolls her eyes. I can't be sure. Maybe a webcam...

  • Laptop Bag? (Score:3, Funny)

    by imadork ( 226897 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @01:24PM (#3168883) Homepage
    I've found that a good way to keep a laptop from being stolen is to not put it in a bag that screams, "There's a laptop in this bag!"

    My wife has a Pismo G3 from her employer, whose IT department bought her a Targus laptop bag with the order because "We do it for all Laptop orders". Never mind the fact that the bag was obviously made to fit a boxy PC laptop, not the curvy Pismo. Ultimately, she found a backpack with a laptop compartment built in, and bought it herself. She's willing to trade the fact that her laptop bag doesn't look "Professional" (read: pretentious) for the fact that nobody knows its a laptop bag. Nobody's stolen it yet....

    And the Targus laptop bag is sitting somewhere on a spare desk in her department. Nobody else wants to use it, either.

    • Re:Laptop Bag? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I have a co-worker who uses a diaper bag to carry her laptop. It's a good quality bag with lots of pockets. Nobody wants to steal a diaper bad, but somebody did once steal the laptop case she was using to carry diapers around.

    • Targus laptop bags and the opposite of stealth. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Nonesuch ( 90847 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @01:42PM (#3168981) Homepage Journal
      My Targus bag looks more like a briefcase than a laptop case. Yeah, it does look "Professional" (or even pretentious), like a lawyer's case for briefs.

      I'm very very happy with Targus -- not just the quality, but also the support (broke the strap two years after getting the bag, they sent a new, improved strap, for free).

      The big drawback to Targus bags is that they are heavy. That is also their strength, as the bag takes a lot of abuse, saving the laptop inside from harm.

      Speaking of a good way to keep a laptop from being stolen is to not put it in a bag that screams, "There's a laptop in this bag!" , I have a pile of clean old Compaq laptop bags without the laptops...

      These bags scream "There is a Compaq Laptop in this bag!", though there isn't -- I give them to family members to use as briefcases, lunch bags, and even keep one in the back of my truck to hold my jumper cables.

      Nobody has stolen my jumper cables or my nieces schoolbooks... yet.

  • I'd imagine that all of the school systems that are handing out laptops to their students could benefit from this if the price was right, although I'm still of the opinion that accidental physical damage is a greater threat to laptops (in any deployment locale) than theft. And more often than not the real value is in the data and program code, not the machinery itself.

    And my employer has ceased to deploy physical security measures, figuring that insurance will replace anything, and usually with more up to date equipment.

    Now whether or not this is cost effective is another issue.
  • The Caveo card's execution is superb, but its concept isn't foolproof. For example, a thief (perhaps knowing how the card works) could simply eject the whining card and toss it into the Hudson.

    I find the bolded part above a bit distressing. When I started readinga bout the Caveo card I assumed that the card becomes physically secured to the machine by some means or another. I imagined that there would perhaps be a short cable to the anti-theft jack that seem to exist on all new machines.

    Imagine a car alarm on the exterior of a car, where a thief could just rip the blaring siren off and ditch it while driving away. Not that car alarms are 100% effective, but at least it's a somewhat pain in the ass to disable by comparison.

    This also brings up another problem with laptops. PCMCIA cards in general are quite easy to remove, especially those wireless cards which protrude a good half-inch or more out of the PCMCIA slot. Ethernet and modem cards are relatively cheap these days, but wireless cards, hard drives, video input devices, and other toys are not. Even batteries and internal hard-drives are easy to grab, and they can bring in some good cash. A good crook could clear out a few thousand dollars worth of hardware in about 10 minutes, all inconspicuously since these things are quite pocketable.

    Anyway, after using a notebook for quite some time and having one stolen at the office while I took a nap (all nighters suck) I would say the most cost effective theft-detterrant for the machine is the combo-lock/key notebook cable. They're a lot cheaper, more reliable to arm, and look more secure than the $100+ fancy alternatives proposed in the article above. I would argue that a cable-locked notebook looks like a serious pain in the ass to mess with, since it entails snippers and the like. I think the products mentioned in the NYtimes article might be good only when combined with a cable lock, but definitely not alone.

    So does anyone know of ways to physically secure PCMCIA devices?

    • Sahara writes:
      This also brings up another problem with laptops. PCMCIA cards in general are quite easy to remove
      ...
      A good crook could clear out a few thousand dollars worth of hardware in about 10 minutes, all inconspicuously since these things are quite pocketable.

      Computer stores learned this the hard way. Used to be, when you went to the CDW showroom half the floor model laptops (locked down with a cable lock) would have been stripped of every removeable part, from hard drives to taking a screwdriver to the bottom access panel and stripping out the RAM.

      Lately CDW locks the laptops up with this wire bondage cage that makes component removal more difficult, but you still see the occasional machine where a small hand has managed to wiggle out the 2.5 hard drive, etc.

      My oldest laptop is designed so when the cable lock is in the 'security slot', you cannot remove the hard drive.

      So does anyone know of ways to physically secure PCMCIA devices?
      Some Toshiba models have two points to attach a cable lock, the second being below the (plastic) door that covers the PCMCIA slots. Attach a physically large security lock, and you block access to the eject button and/or the cards.
  • Put an old-style "intel inside" sticker on it.

    Make sure that any model numbers on it somehow suggest that it is a 386, and that its screen is either black and white, or passive-matrix.

    Cover all non-legacy ports with a plate having dummy serial ports or somesuch.

    The CDROM drive should be made to look like a 5.25 inch floppy drive. (I don't know if notebooks ever had those, but hey, nothing wrong with overkill)

    Is anyone gonna steal this thing?

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