SEATLLE nTRACKER LAPTOP TRACKING PRODUCT FROM SYNET The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: nTracker may help owner recover lost, stolen laptopSmall office / Home office
nTracker may help owner recover lost, stolen laptop

By Craig Crossman
Knight Ridder Newspapers

A laptop computer is an expensive piece of equipment, and thieves love them. More than a million are reported lost or stolen every year.
What's even more distressing is that, according to the FBI, less than 2 percent of them are recovered. And while the loss of this valuable equipment is bad enough, consider the likelihood that the owners may be even more distressed about the loss of their stored data.

Wouldn't it be great if there was some way you could track your stolen laptop much as you can track a stolen vehicle these days? With equipment such as LoJack and services like OnStar, you can pinpoint an automobile's location so that law-enforcement agencies can move in, make arrests and recover your stolen property.

If you fear the loss of your laptop and you want to do something to catch a thief, there is an anti-theft and tracking product you can buy: nTracker, from Synet (www.synet.biz), an anti-theft laptop-tracking, recovery and data-protection system. The $49.95 software utility, which runs on Windows, installs in a matter of minutes.

Part of the setup procedure requires you to enter in some personal information, such as your e-mail address, that will be used to receive tracking information, and your special password that will give you access to the nTracker program itself.

Other configurations let you set up the e-mail transmission period, which tells nTracker how often it needs to periodically send e-mail to your address to ensure that everything is operating as expected. In addition to the time duration, these e-mails will also be delivered if nTracker detects when the Internet-service-provider location changes.

Although the changing of an ISP is not necessarily an indicator that your laptop has been swiped, it will more than likely be changed in the event that your laptop has been stolen.

nTracker can be set to surreptitiously notify you whenever it is connected to the Internet. It will do so on virtually any kind of broadband or dialup connection. When triggered, it will send you an e-mail saying that it has been stolen along with location information without the thief ever knowing that his location is being transmitted. That location is the form of the thief's IP address.

Other features include asking for a password when the computer is turned on. If the wrong password is entered more than three times, you can set nTracker to display one of three different warning messages.

Courteous Persuasion says, "Attention Please — This computer is now used by an unauthorized user. Please stop and call this number." Humorous advice says, "Here is not my place. Please put me back to my place. I want to go back to my owner." Warning message says, "This computer has been stolen or lost. Please call this number. Otherwise you may be involved in a legal problem." All display contact data, such as a phone number and e-mail address.

You also can set up nTracker so it will automatically encrypt any files on the hard drive when it detects an illegal entry.

I've learned that nothing is foolproof, and if your stolen property lands in the hands of a hacking professional, your system may very well be toast. But short of something like that happening, you may find that the use of something like nTracker might result in the recovery of your stolen computer, or, at the very least, protect your personal information from prying eyes.