It’s really tough to lose a friend, especially your best friend. That’s right, I’m talking about the theft of your laptop. Wouldn’t it be great to recover your precious and catch the crooks? The smart chaps at the University of Washington and the University of California San Diego have come up with an open source tracking system for stolen laptops – Adeona – the Roman goddess of safe returns, or something. Proper details and all the instructions to set up the service are in the link.

Simply put, the system works by sending a small message, and for the mac, a photo, every so often to a server. During the installation process you build a credential recovery file that you need to keep safe by emailing to yourself. You then use this file to connect to Adeona and determine where your laptop has gone.

To Catch a Thief

Once the criminals connect to the internet with your purloined laptop, Adeona grabs the internal and external IP address of the machine, the wireless access point name and the nearest router. A number of online repositories are available to tell you where the heck these access points and routers may be. It also takes a picture of the bad guy (see above.) It does this update every 30 minutes or so you have updated information if the crook is on the move.

You can provide this information to your local law enforcement officer and Internet Service Provider. DON’T TAKE THE LAW INTO YOUR OWN HANDS, he shouted. If you install this software on a University computer that gets stolen, IT Services will liase with the RCMP directly to recover your machine.