Track Computers Whereabouts 5

[jammer1221]

Hey all,

Recently we've had a break-in and 9 laptops were stolen. We are currently in the process of overdriving our security that is in place, and we had a few ideas to localize it to each computer.

So my question is, is it possible to track where a computer is whenever it connects to the internet?

I've heard of things available on the web called GeoLocation or something like that. It can tell where a computer is but only as detailed as the city. I don't know alot about IP addresses but is it possible to track exactly where someone is via their IP address, or even just their name.

I'm sure this will have to be some sort of program, but I'm asking for your guys help because you all spend alot of time on the web, and possible know things about IP addresses and things like that.

Thank you very much,

Matt

 

[irbk]

First off, let me say that when I'm using the term "lojack" below, I'm not refering to any peticular service as I looked at several different ones.
In regards to services that "claim" to survive a format, I've played with them, most of them arn't worth the price. About 8 months ago, we had about 20 computers stolen from our office. After that we looked into lojacking all our computers. To be completely honest with you, when I first started looking into it, I could have swore that Dell was doing some kind of thing where you could lojack a laptop where it was actually a hardware lojack. GPS signal or something. However, I found this is just not the case (I don't know why no one's thought of it, seems like a good idea to me). All the lojacking software I found is something that installs on the hard drive. Basic jist os this, Every time the computer connects to the internet (or once a day at most) the computer "calls home". If during it's "call home" that computer is said to be stolen, the IP address is recorded and the company that your getting your lojack service from calls the police and in conjunction with the police and ISP, they find the bad guys. This is supposed to be an "invisible" program that runs on the hard drive and will survive a format. Well, I tried it. I took a computer, and installed the lojack software on it. I let it do it's "call home" a few times. I then disconnected the computer from the internet, marked the computer as stolen in the lojack software, and proceeded to do a standard "fresh" install of windows XP. After the standard install, I hooked it up to the internet and waited for it to make it's "call home". The call was never made. After speaking with the sales people about this, there response was something along the lines of "well, you have to change the boot order on you're system so that it won't boot to anything but the hard drive, then you need to password protect the BIOS". My thoughts were "Sure, this will prevent someone from trying to format the Hard drive on THAT computer, but why should I pay X dollars a month for that when I could take those same precautions myself and it costs me nothing". Setting the boot order and BIOS password will work as long as you don't have an inteligent techno-theif. If it's stolen by some one that's not techno-savy, I'd think that the lojack service would probally help. However, if it's stolen by someone who is techo-savy, the first thing that they would do is wipe the hard drive. Either by taking it out of that computer and formating it in another computer (if you've set the boot order and BIOS password) or by just putting in a new hard drive completely. I'd look at it as kind of like buying a warranty from something at a big name electronics store. Sure, you have the peice of mind that if something goes wrong, you have this to fall back on, but there going to come up with every excuse possible to not honor your warranty.

Just my $.02

 

[daNewfie]

If memory server me correctly, there is some sort of program call "phone home" its suppose to be able to surive a hdd format,. anyway when you connect to the net using the hot machine, it sends a signal to the "phone Home" website....

was a while ago I read about this so im sorry if sketchy on details.

 

[richcleverley]

The url for phone home is

http://www.pcphonehome.com/

Apparently it stops the hard disk being formatted or re partitioned so it should always run. It doesn't survive a format, just won't let it happen although I am sure that if the HD is put in as a secondary drive it cn be formatted.

On thi issue, is there a way to track the computer's modems MAC address? Aren't these individual for every network adapter? Just an idea, can't find a definitive answer.

Hope this helps,

Richard