Computer Theft Precautions

Posted on Tuesday, January 25, 2011 @ 12:44 am

Due to a recent incident, I just wanted to share some tips with everyone on how to best protect themselves, their data and property if their computer is stolen.

First step: reset your passwords for ALL of your accounts as soon as your computer is stolen. I can’t emphasize this step enough. Blackboard, bank, MSN, Gmail, Facebook, and the list goes on.

Personal Files

School files, photographs, scanned documents, all of these are personal files that are highly valuable to a person. I would recommend you use Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) to synchronize your files (in your Dropbox folder) to the Internet and to any shared computer (e.g. a desktop at home).

Some tricks to get free space:

Having and using Dropbox means that even if your laptop is stolen, you will still have your files. For additional protection, you can choose to use TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org), create an encrypted container, put all of your files in that and, optionally, save it in your Dropbox folder so it’s accessible at home as well. Using TrueCrypt adds the additional security of having all of your personal files protected and inaccessible to thieves.

Encryption

With TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) you can encrypt your entire hard-drive, which means the thief can’t get into your laptop at all without knowing the password you set. This works by requiring a password to be entered before Windows is booted up.

Personally, I don’t use this as I wouldn’t want to risk not being able to access my files if the encrypted drive gets corrupted.

Tracking

All I can say is: Prey Project => http://preyproject.com/

Read and set it up on your computer now. Best thing you can do.

Basically it allows you to track down your computer, silently log what the person is doing on your computer, even silently take pictures of the person through the webcam and email them to you, delete certain files/folders if you mark your computer has “Missing”, as well as receive email notifications when the computer is being used. Best of all, it’s free (and no, I don’t work for them!). I have it set up on my laptop, netbook AND desktop.

Passwords

“What if a person steals my laptop and my browser is set to autofill my username and passwords for all my frequently used sites?”

For this I use LastPass: www.lastpass.com. I only need to remember one password to be able to have LastPass (not my browser) autofill my login information for sites I use. LastPass is basically an online password manager that acts as a substitute for the default browser password manager, with the key difference of requiring a password for it to work. The usefulness of this is displayed through the thief having to enter a password to have log-in forms autofill. No knowledge of the password, they don’t have access to your accounts via autofill.

It may be difficult to understand until you try it out. Note: make sure you disable the “Remember passwords for sites” option in Firefox (Tools => Options => Security => untick “Remember passwords for sites”); you can probably find the option for your respective browser easily. LastPass supports all of the major browsers.

Remote Access

If you want to have access to your laptop after it’s stolen, install LogMeIn (Free) as a precaution: https://secure.logmein.com/

You’ll be able to see if/when your computer is online and connected, and you’ll be able to log in, black out the monitor if you wish, and use your laptop as if you were in front of it. You can delete personal files or, more revenge-like, see what they’ve been up to by either analyzing browser history, password files (browsers, MSN), or install a keylogger and log their passwords and ruin their lives ;) (personally, I’d be doing the last one)

Closing

So, I hope this helps. If someone steals a laptop, there’s nothing much we can do except move forward (or choose to get revenge through remoting in, installing a keylogger, collecting THEIR personal login information and commence having “fun”, but that’s just me ;) )

Filed under Techie, Tips