Prey Project

Prey is a free and lightweight program that you can install on your laptop or mobile device that allows you to track its location anywhere in the world. Of course this means that if your beloved Android gets stolen you can get the location of the thief (or whoever is in possession of the machine) and deliver the gospel to him or of course just send the boys in blue to pay him a visit.

NOTE: Prey is currently available of the PC, Mac, Linux and Android (sorry to iPhone, iPad and iPod users).

How it works

When your device gets stolen you update the status of your device at the Control Panel (on the prey website, which can be accessed from any machine) and you’ll get an email in about 20 minutes (by default, you can change this later in the control panel) providing the information you requested.

In the report you’ll get a snapshot of the machine’s current location, a screenshot of what the user was doing at the time and IP information. The program is even robust enough to give you a list of currently available networks, changes in your hardware and a lot of other information which makes for some juicy evidence is a court case.

I tried it myself at work today and this is what I got:

1) A link to Google Maps showing the machine’s location (highlighted by a green arrow).

2) A snapshot of what I was doing at the time, typing this article.

3) I even got Network Information such as the devices Public & Private IP address, MAC address and Logged User.

What you can do if your machine is stolen?

As shown above you can get the current location of your machine at a particular point in time. If your customized report gives you a snapshot of the user you can decide how you want to deal with that particular individual. Otherwise asking the boys in blue is probably the best option. Although they might be much slower than yourself in actually doing something (especially if they realize you can track the guy).

After testing it myself I’ll say that it definitely gives some hope to those who got their machine stolen due to Prey’s Actions. These can do anything from scare the thief to annoy him.

The only thing I didn’t do (for obvious reasons) was select of the Actions that can be applied to your machine if stolen. If your machine is stolen the actions available are:

• Alarm: Make a loud noise for 30 seconds so that you can find the culprit if nearby (my personal favorite).

• Alert: Show the user an alert letting him know that the machine is stolen (and that you’re after him)

• Lock: Locks the computer (at the BIOS level)  from being used until a password is entered

• Secure:  Hides emails, deletes stored passwords, and deletes browser cookies, preventing access from unauthorized users.

Stuff you might want to know

1. So what happens if the thief reformats the hard drive?

Yeah well….that’s a problem…unless of course if you secure your machine from the BIOS level, that will most certainly make it difficult for him/her to do so.

2. What if he changes the hard drive?

I wouldn’t worry about that too much; if the guy’s a thief he can’t afford to do that.

3. Can the thief change the IP to make it look like he’s in another country?

He can try, but since Prey is able to detect the private IP Address of the machine and nearby networks, he won’t be successful.

See the full FAQ here: http://preyproject.com/faq

Download it here: http://preyproject.com/download

Written by :

Andrew Olton

 

Features - Technology