Do you use a Laptop Anti theft solution?

[newguy]

I don't at the minute, but I stumbled across the http://preyproject.com/ website earlier and figured that it might not be the worst idea to install something like this? Do any of you use this, or any other similiar anti theft solution?

[seemly]

I have genuinely been thinking about using such an application after reading an article somewhere through the week of some girl that "lost" her laptop and was able to remotely start-up and take a photo via the laptop webcam of the "robber" who "stole" it, who was "asleep" in bed.

The reason for all the inverted commas?
It seemed more like a PR article than a real one, but did touch on the subject of the importance of having such security for high valued possessions containing sensitive or personal data/information.

[newguy]

It definitely seems like something with a greater upside than downside. Nobody likes to think they'll be burgled, but in case of disaster I can think of nothing better than being able to track the person down. Damn, even this sounds like a PR effort!! Haha!

[DomainMagnate]

I had a laptop stolen couple years ago, so since then I backup my most important stuff at dropbox, also have passwords on all laptops (these are probably easy to break though, the default windows logon password system) and just generally making sure I don't leave it out of site for long.

Not sure how useful that app would actually be, say you know where your laptop is - but do you really want to get involved with some local criminals to try to get it back? Besides usually they just format everything.

I'm much more concerned about the sensitive data and the loss of important info than the actual laptop cost, so I was also considering using one of these drive encryption programs - anyone uses them?

[djbw]

Frankly, I'm looking for an excuse to stop building websites on a 10" netbook. Backups of sites are spread around various other computers, and all my media are on a 2TB external. I use Google Docs a lot too.
I try to treat my netbook as something I could possibly lose or get nicked so I don't leave valuable or security conscious data on there

[JMOT]

is there anything that will wipe a laptop clean remotely if its stolen?

ahh I just read the preyproject spec... thats freeking awesome. signing up today all my devices.

[liam]

I have used Gadget Trak for mac which is very useful takes an image with webcam when new wifi network detected and uploads them to your flickr account, also emails you ip address . More identify and recovery tool a remote wipe would be useful.

http://gadgettrak.com/products/laptop/