Stolen Laptop - Track it?

[kenimpzoom]

My brother had his laptop stolen from his car.

He had a lot of personal info on it.

Is there any way that you can wip out that data when someone uses that laptop to access the internet?

Doesnt the CPU have a unique ID that you can trace?

Thanks, Ken

 

[Mark42]

Re: Stolen Laptop - Wipe out data remotely?

Re: Stolen Laptop - Wipe out data remotely?

Sorry, there is nothing I am aware of to wipe the PC remotely. Here is something to help protect the data on his next PC:

Safeguard Easy.

Safeguard Easy encripts the entire hard drive so even if stolen, all the data is useless. It also requires a password on startup even before the operating system is loaded . That is critical.

I use Safeguard Easy on my laptop and other than having to signon before signing on for Windows, you would not even know its there.

 

[i386]

Re: Stolen Laptop - Wipe out data remotely?

Re: Stolen Laptop - Wipe out data remotely?

I don't know of anything that would let you delete it remotely. I would think if that were the case there would be lots of horror stories about how it was exploited and peoples hard drives were being erased.

 

[KRS]

Re: Stolen Laptop - Wipe out data remotely?

Re: Stolen Laptop - Wipe out data remotely?

This won't help him now, but...

Our work computers have an initial signon screen that, when given the wrong password 5 times, initiates a hard drive dump.

I don't know the name of the feature, I doubt our company created it.

 

[kenimpzoom]

Re: Stolen Laptop - Wipe out data remotely?

Re: Stolen Laptop - Wipe out data remotely?

Thats what I thought, thanks guys.

Is there at least some way to track it and see when someone logs onto the net? I thought each processor has an ID and you can use that (saw it in a movie once )He really wants the data back as he had no back up (yea, I know, not real smart).

Ken

 

[tommays]

Re: Stolen Laptop - Track it?

There is some lo-jack style software that will phone home the next time it makes and internet connection

Generaly it has gone from a crack head to a pawn shop and unlikely to fall into a credit card thiefs hands

They are getting 42 million peoples info to easy to be bothered with one person


It is to late for that NOW but there is allways next time

Tommays

 

[ndemge]

Re: Stolen Laptop - Track it?

My advise would be to go to every website he has a login to, and change the password. If he did a lot of online banking, or if he did his taxes on that machine with direct depsoit info.... Change bank accounts.

It's a royal pain, but depending how much he had it set to auto-login to places, he may really have a huge liability sitting out there that may take 6 months through 4 pawn shops until you get the right person to buy it an exploit it after he thinks all is safe.