How to Recover Your Stolen Mac
Wow! Sometimes I am simply amazed by the software gadgets that are out there. Undercover is one of the most innovative applications I have seen in years.
I frequent many coffee houses to sit back, enjoy a cup of joe and use the internet. Sometimes I leave my Macbook Pro unattended. Rarely am I worried about it, but occasionally I feel the need to pack up my laptop just to go to the bathroom. Half the time I forget my security cable at home. It’s cumbersome to pack into my bag.
By the way, watch out for your laptop at college campuses. Attending college years ago, I remember at least hearing of one laptop theft a week, either in the police blotter or just by word of mouth. It got so bad, in my student union they posted signs on every table saying you should lock up your laptop or face losing it.
This is where Undercover comes in. For $29.99, you can get a license to use this program that actively tracks where your laptop is over the internet. Undercover will even send you pictures every 6 minutes of the thief if your laptop has a built-in iSight. It will take screenshots of what’s happening on your laptop, inevitably revealing the thieves identity through email addresses and chat nicknames. If that isn’t enough to get your Mac laptop back, then Undercover can simulate a system failure. When the thief tries to send it to an Apple reseller to get fixed, a message will pop up that says the laptop is stolen.
Undercover is made by a company called Orbicule. They promise a total refund of Undercover in the event that it does not lead to the recovery of your stolen laptop.
A great application to acquire if you are worried about your laptop getting stolen.
Check out Undercover on Orbicule’s website.
Pretty cool
I like the iSight feature but I guess that could get a little weird
All they need to do is wipe the drive which you would think anybody with 1/2 a brain would do with a stolen mac. Maybe this is just for the people without 1/2 a brain.
Set an Open Firmware Password, that way a thief cannot boot up from system disks without the password.
I am using MacTrak (www.mactrak.com), it uses the camera, but sends the image to your Flickr account and flags it as private, as well as to your email. It also has wi-fi positoning (the same used by the iPhone and iPod Touch) to get the location of the device within 10-20 meters. You should give it a try.