Beat the thief…protect your laptop.
Few people will ask what is a laptop these days as they are no longer just a luxury, for most people they are now an essential work tool and the majority of households will have at least one if not two, three or four. For most owners of a laptop it’s a great place to keep all things vital that we use. It stores our email and financial information, personal writings, irreplaceable media like photos and videos and maybe even business documents. But have you ever actually sat back and considered what impact it would have if your laptop was lost or stolen?
Unfortunately, I’ve been one of those thousands of people each year that become a victim of computer theft. Like many I was one that just thought “it’ll never happen to me!”, but it did, I was burgled earlier this year and they stole two laptops amongst other various items. The Police said that laptops are one of the most popular items that draw the common thief and they very rarely are recovered. Because they are very portable and can be gone in seconds they are an easy target for a thief. Luckily for me I had only just switched to using the laptop that got stolen so it contained very little data but even now I am still worried there may have been a few files that in the hands of a sophisticated thief could make me vulnerable to identity theft.
So it got me thinking what impact could it have had?
I mean what if the laptop had been owned by the organisation I worked for that had individual data of consumers or clients it would have made all those individuals susceptible to ID theft, including friends, co-workers and clients and I would have probably be held liable and quite possibly have lost my job.
I don’t know about you but that’s a scary thought. Therefore since getting a new laptop I have taken various steps in preventing myself from becoming the victim of computer theft again or at least decreasing the likely impact!
First thing I would suggest is to write down important information such as the laptop’s serial number, make/model number and support phone number, even take a photo it. Also just as important keep the receipt of the computer and associated equipment in a safe place, I was glad to know where mine was when having to deal with the insurance people!
Invest in a laptop lock if you are ever away from it i.e. in a coffee shop or at work and you are away from your desk, I know you might think why would I need one at work, well thousands of laptops go missing from large organisations each year, so ask yourself can you be sure you can trust everyone who walks through your office?
Engrave/Mark your computer with a sticker or a UV pen so it can be quickly identified by the police if recovered.
Most importantly don’t leave it on clear show or out in the open i.e. in a car or in clear view of a house window and always put it out of site from people that walk into a room, it could be enough to save it from a thief. Remember they will grab the first/most expensive thing they see as they are rushing to avoid getting court. I was very good at doing this but the day we were burgled I had just left it on top of the bed and it turned out to be the only thing taken from that room!
If you travel a lot with your laptop pay close attention to it at airports. In 2008 Dell did a survey and found out that 800,000 laptops were lost/stolen at airports throughout the world, with a staggering 900 at Heathrow each week. Never ask anyone to keep an eye on it unless you know them and trust them. Also don’t take you eye off it when it goes through the scanner make sure you are ready to collect it on the other side!
Now hopefully taking the steps above will reduce the chances of your laptop been stolen but unfortunately it still may happen so the following points are to help you reduce the impact it may have in such a situation:
Make sure you are periodically backing up important data on external hard drives or even better take advantage of online backup applications in case they grab your external hard drive at the same time.
At the very least make sure you have password protect at boot up – a strong/long password with letters, numbers and Capitals will at least stop a common thief from accessing your computer account and files.
Never save passwords to anything such as email accounts, online banking etc. on your computer unless they have been encrypted. The same with any other sensitive information that is confidential make sure the files are locked/encrypted.
Now obviously if you do happen to be a victim of laptop theft then the best outcome would be to be able to recover you laptop. Unfortunately traditional crime investigation of fingerprinting etc. is very unsuccessful and recovering laptops is low on the police agenda without hard evidence to go on. However, with anti theft software we can aid police inquiries and they have recently come out and urged all laptop owners to download this type of laptop software. With Anti-theft tracking software victims can fight back and having reported it stolen on an online portal can then track your laptop, take photos of the culprit if they use it, see what they are using it for, backup your data and then once you have enough evidence to go to the police with you can lock the computer down. There have been a number of cases this year where victims have taken advantage of this kind of software and most recently an FBI adviser managed to recover his Mac laptop that had been stolen in the London riots.
Laptop software for theft-recovery is available online. The software I downloaded offers geolocation tracking, Data Backup, IP Logs tracking, Data Encryption and Computer Lockdown once the tracking and encryption processes have been complete, I thought for all those features it was a worth while investment and would give me a great chance of recovering the device if I needed to.
Hopefully it has never happened to you and if you follow the advice above at least it wouldn’t be a cause to worry about if it did… don’t leave it to think about theft protection until your computer has already been stolen, don’t let them have the satisfaction!
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