FREE tool to track lost/stolen laptops

[mikemac]

<p>An unfortunate fact of life at any University is that laptops are small valuable items, so they can end up lost or stolen. The University of Washington has released a free tool to help you recover a lost or stolen laptop. It installs a piece of software that periodically connects to the internet and allows you (but only you) to identify where the laptop is. A press release is at [Free</a> Adeona service tracks stolen laptops | University of Washington](<a href=“http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=43037]Free”>http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=43037)</p>

<p>

Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there’s no need to rely on a single third party. What’s more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner’s choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.</p>

<p>Adeona is designed to use the Open Source OpenDHT distributed storage service to store location updates sent by a small software client installed on an owner’s laptop. The client continually monitors the current location of the laptop, gathering information (such as IP addresses and local network topology) that can be used to identify its current location. The client then uses strong cryptographic mechanisms to not only encrypt the location data, but also ensure that the ciphertexts stored within OpenDHT are anonymous and unlinkable. At the same time, it is easy for an owner to retrieve location information.

You can get the software at [url=<a href=“http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/]Adeona[/url”>http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/]Adeona[/url</a>]</p>

[keltix]

<p>wow are you serious? </p>

<p>this would be awesome if it works…and opensource!!!</p>