New Gadget For Christmas? New Year For Stolen iPods, Cell Phones and Laptops
There has been a lot of questions coming in regarding tracking solutions for iPods and other gadgets. The main reason being that a lot of folks have received them as Christmas presents this year and are a bit afraid to bring them back to school, on the bus, leave them in the car, or even just plain walk down the street with them for fear of the device being stolen. Their fears are well grounded. According to the Urban Institute’s “iCrime” report there is evidence to suggest that an increasingly mobile society has led to an increase in theft and violent theft at that.
GadgetTrak, who has been mentioned on this site before offers several solutions to help this issue. The original GadgetTrak USB product was developed with removable media and gadgets such as iPods in mind. When a device is stolen the software can send data back that helps lead to recovery such as general location, user name, computer name and other data. This system is the first product on the market that enabled device owners a means of theft recovery for their devices. The agent software leverages some interesting characteristics such as evading firewalls and sending data over a secure connection with some new advancements on the way.
The second product GadgetTrak PhoneBak offered is for cellular phones and takes a somewhat similar approach only utilizing wireless networks. When a thief steals a phone it is essentially worthless after 48 hours unless they switch the SIM card in the phone, when this occurs their software detects the change and triggers software to send data via SMS to pre-defined numbers.
GadgetTrak now also offer Mac theft recovery software, even utilizing the built in iSight camera to capture video of thieves, information regarding wireless networks in the area and a bevy of other data that helps with theft recovery. The data is all collected without the use of a central server, or any sort of monitoring by GadgetTrak, the information is sent to the owner’s email account(s). There is also an option to integrate the software with Twitter, for additional notifications. There are theft recovery solutions out there for PC’s that kind of give me the willies as they rely on a “Big Brother” model, with your system constantly communicating with a central server. GadgetTrak does not currently offer a PC solution, but it is nice to see a solution specifically targeted towards Macs.
In addition to all of these booby traps for thieves, GadgetTrak also offers lost and found tags for those who are kind enough to return an item if it is simply found.
GadgetTrak although a young company, even has some recoveries under their belt. So if you have a new gadget, make sure to keep it close and if you are worried about theft you might want to take a look at GadgetTrak.
