Any way of remotely 'stopping' a laptop (stolen)

[guydewdney]

My GF just got robbed - someone broke in and nicked her laptop (c/w charger and her un-backed up dissertation ) DVDs (but not the player ) - my bike tankbag (presumably to stash the DVDs) - but not her handbag or her car keys??

bizzarely, her DVD collection is in a glass cupboard, behind a digeridoo and a guitar, which they PUT BACK IN PLACE???

anyway - is there any way of 'stopping' a XP (home) machine next time it connects to the 'net? if not - why not? they can do it with phones....

 

[Flyer]

My GF just got robbed - someone broke in and nicked her laptop (c/w charger and her un-backed up dissertation ) DVDs (but not the player ) - my bike tankbag (presumably to stash the DVDs) - but not her handbag or her car keys??

bizzarely, her DVD collection is in a glass cupboard, behind a digeridoo and a guitar, which they PUT BACK IN PLACE???

anyway - is there any way of 'stopping' a XP (home) machine next time it connects to the 'net? if not - why not? they can do it with phones....

Sorry to hear that Guy; what a nightmare

I'm pretty sure there is nothing built into XP (or any other OS for that matter). Besides, a thief could simply change the laptop's IP address and machine name and it would have a new identity. Or even simply wipe the HD so that there is no trace of the previous owner.

But I did remember an article in El Reg from some time ago (Feb 2003 in fact!) about software that could report back to a server the next time it connected to the internet. This story was about the trace and recovery of a stolen tablet PC and the arrest of the thief.

The software is called Computrace. Costs about $60 pa.

I realise this is a bit late for now, but might be useful for future use.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[peterchurch]

Yes this can be done but not unless the software was on there when it got nicked

 

[SimonsMerc]

A friend of mine had his laptop stolen, and got the police to trace it via the internet usage. He had an email client which had his username and password saved. After the laptop was stolen, the police contacted his ISP and asked them to log the IP address from whence the next email POP3 connection came. Sure enough, a couple of days later, an email connection came in and the ISP logged it and reported back. They then traced that IP address back to a real address by requiring the information from the user's ISP, and went around to the house it belonged to (normal domestic ADSL connection).

The laptop was returned, however it turned out that the person who was using it wasn't the thief but rather a mug who bought it cheap (£75 for a £2000 laptop) off a guy in the pub. He had been trying to work out how the hell to make the email client download his email instead of the previous owner's

Things to note here though - my friend was very lucky. His machine was stolen by someone who just wanted to get rid of it ("sold as seen, cheap as chips"), and bought by someone who doesn't know computers. The first thing a real thief would do is nuke the hard disk (or worse, start stealing your data). So it's very rare to be lucky enough to get something like this back!

-simon