PreparedPC

It’s a situation no laptop owner looks forward to–their laptop gets stolen. With a little planning (and hopefully, the thief’s unwitting assistance), the free service Adeona can help track down your laptop.

Currently, Adeona may be used on laptop/desktop/server type computers, but the developers are researching how to make this available for mobile devices, like iPhones. The Adeona client is available for Windows XP/Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.

Private, Reliable and Open-Source

Adeona is an open-source utility that uses a client which you install on your computer. From that point on, your information is kept private through the use of encryption techniques described in the developers’ 2008 paper. Location updates are transmitted about every 30 minutes to the community-run OpenDHT site. This information is retained for one week.

If your laptop is stolen, you can retrieve the laptop’s location information by running the Adeona retrieval tool. You can then hand that evidence over to law enforcement officials to help their investigation.

Installling Adeona

Download the appropriate client and install per the documentation. IMPORTANT: Backup the .OST file that the client copies to your desktop, as well as the password you used. You’ll need these to later retrieve the computer’s location information. The password that you enter during the client install is used to encrypt the information that the Adeona client sends to the OpenDHT site.

Retrieving Your Computer’s Location Information

On another computer, install Adeona’s Recovery Tools. (You might want to uncheck the client install option.) The “retrieval tools” option is selected by default. Windows users, follow the directions here. You’ll need the .OST file you had copied from the original computer, as well as the password you entered during the missing computer’s client install.

When you run the Recovery Wizard (Windows XP/Vista users, see here), you can specify a date/time range for the location information, as well as the number of locations to search for.

After you specify the password from the original client install and start the recovery process, the results will be displayed in a command prompt on the screen, and copied to a folder on your desktop.

You’ll want to copy this information to a secure place, then erase this copy. Present it to law enforcement authorities who can use this to track down and hopefully, recover your missing computer.

Takeaway

Adeona is a free and secure way to be prepared for when your computer is stolen. It’s not bullet-proof. Since the Adeona client is installed on the hard drive, if the hard drive is replaced, or wiped clean, the Adeona client is gone. Most criminals do not have the knowledge or time to reconfigure a computer, so Adeona is a good (and free) option.

Pay services, such as Lojack for Laptops use a client as well as a BIOS module installed on some manufacturers’ laptops. In this case, even if the hard drive is replaced, or operating system reinstalled, the laptop can still send out a “distress call” when the computer is accessing the internet.

Having a computer stolen is no fun, so take a look at the Adeona as a way to get prepared now.