phone home software

I am college kid living on campus and i recently purchased a laptop. I dont want it to grow legs and walk off on me... and if it does i want to be able to trace it somehow. GPS's aside, is there any software that i can configure to visit my website so that I can log the IP address of my laptops location? im looking for something that will do this automatically and completely in the background and oblivious to the user, this way if it is stolen i can look at the logs on the page (which would be in PHP, i can code that end of it) and i will have proper IP information to turn over to authorities... any suggestions?

 

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/08/19/digilife-lojack-laotops-cx_daa_0819digilife.html
http://www.ztrace.com/
http://www.absolute.com/default.asp

 

>> GPS's aside, is there any software that I can configure to visit my website so that I can log the IP address of my laptops location? I’m looking for something that will do this automatically and completely in the background and oblivious to the user, this way if it is stolen i can look at the logs on the page (which would be in PHP, I can code that end of it) and i will have proper IP information to turn over to authorities... any suggestions? <<

Sounds like you might be looking for something like the freeware product called LocatePC which may be able to "ever-so-slightly" increase your chances of the recovery of any stolen laptop computer. After installation, the program runs automatically whenever the computer is started and connects to the internet.

At that point, LocatePC sends a "secret email" message, containing the IP address of the current Internet connection. It also sends details for the network location, which may help to identify the thief. The email is sent once a day or whenever the IP address changes and/or both; depending upon how it is configured.

The only bothersome thing that occurs while using this LocatePC software; is since (of course) it has no way of knowing whether the laptop is stolen or not; there is no way to bypass this "message sending" as long as the program is active. Consequently you will continue to receive an email every day and whenever your IP address changes. Therefore you might want to set up an entirely new and separate POP3 account which is specifically used only for receiving the software's messages.

LocatePC requires access to a POP3 account in order to send the message to; and works with AOL, Yahoo Mail Plus, and these free providers: Bluebottle, Gawab, and @inMail24. It will also work with some other ISPs and email providers that support POP. Then when the computer comes up missing; you can check with that account to see if the LocatePC messages can help you to recover your laptop.

Important Note: Unfortunately, these types of "PC retrieval via e-mail" security products are generally considered to be a "long shot" at best. Because have been around for a number of years, the chances that a professional thief will connect a stolen PC to the Internet (without cleaning out the hard drive content first) are rather slim. However if a person who steals your PC is not a professional thief, who knows – LocatePC might actually work for you and since the software is available as freeware; it really doesn’t do any harm to have it installed!

Good Luck!

 

thanks alot, this locatePC software is awesome and perfect for what i wanted