Concerned about your laptop being stolen? (you should be)……now there’s LoJack for your laptop

Here’s a startling statistic: a laptop is stolen every 53 seconds and according to the FBI, 97% are never recovered. LoJack® for Laptops from Computrace® offers a recovery service that they claim has a 90% success rate. Essentially it is software that you install on your laptop that enables Computrace’s Recovery Team (all ex-cops) to track its location, joining up with local law enforcement to hopefully recover your laptop.
After reporting it stolen to Computrace the software silently contacts the monitoring center at Compuserve, identifying itself as a stolen computer. Then LoJack starts calling in every 15 minutes (if it ever goes back online), allowing the recovery team to track the laptop. Tracking is done by tracing its dial-up address or IP address and by another secret method that Computrace won’t disclose. Computrace says that most local law enforcement is supportive because of the potential of infiltrating larger theft rings.

Computrace claims that LoJack is ‘virtually tamperproof’ and can survive the entire stripping and reformatting of the hard disk. And in a recent sign of support, computer manufacturers, including Dell, IBM, HP and Gateway have just begun embedding a recovery chip on their system boards, allowing the computer to call the monitoring center even if the thief tries to replace the hard drive. Don’t worry, there is a procedure for ‘uninstalling’ the software…….and upon receiving your instructions to do so, Computrace can wipe the drive and securely erase all data and software on your computer if you report it stolen. No consumer version for Mac’s yet (promised by year end).