LoJack

Get a 1-year LoJack for Laptops subscription for $30

Picture this: your laptop is gone. Stolen. Someone broke into your home or office and made off with it. That's not only a pricey piece of hardware down the drain, but also some potentially irreplaceable data.

This happens all the time. My poor mother-in-law had two laptops stolen from her home just a few months ago. They're easy--and popular--targets for thieves. (Laptops, not mothers-in-law.)

If only your abducted PC could call the cops and rat out the crook. That's exactly the idea behind LoJack for Laptops, which, like its automotive-based forebears, helps track and recover stolen systems.… Read more

LoJacked Honda Accord most stolen, recovered vehicle

In LoJack's annual report of the vehicles most stolen, then recovered, the Honda Accord topped the list for 2010. The Honda Civic got silver, and the Toyota Camry came in with a bronze. The Cadillac Escalade, the most stolen car in the U.S., hits the list in fifth place.

LoJack breaks down its stats further, showing that the 2000 Honda Civic is the most stolen and recovered car, and 1994 through 1997 Accords hold the next four positions. For model years less than 5 years old, the 2007 Camry tops the list, followed by the 2009 Camry, then … Read more

FBI reports auto thefts, recovery rates down

Although the FBI reports that vehicle thefts are down, you are still unlikely to recover your stolen car if you don't have some sort of electronic recovery system.

According to the 2009 Crime Statistics report, out of the 794,616 vehicles stolen that year, only 343,274 vehicles (43.2 percent) were recovered. This is the lowest recovery rates have been reported in 25 years.

Stolen vehicles are notoriously used by thieves to commit other crimes, or taken to chop shops and stripped for parts. A number of vehicles each year are shipped out illegally overseas.

In a news … Read more

LoJack unveils self-powered vehicle recovery system

LoJack this week introduced its next-generation Stolen Vehicle Recovery System. LoJack is known for its speedy auto recovery services. The Stolen Vehicle Recovery System is a tiny transmitter hidden within the vehicle and emits a radio frequency signal when activated.

Paul McMahon, a LoJack spokesman, said the new self-powered system runs off a proprietary 10-year battery. The system does not draw power from a vehicle's battery or electrical system, which makes it suited for hybrid, electric cars, and collector cars. "Hybrid and electric cars are very battery-energy dependent, and collector cars typically have older electrical systems," McMahon … Read more

An open-source approach to tracking stolen laptops

SEATTLE--Imagine your laptop is stolen.

Set aside for a second the likelihood that if it was you wouldn't be able to read this story and think instead about how you might go about tracking it down.

There are existing services, such as LoJack, that are designed to help find purloined laptops by identifying the IP addresses where they are subsequently used and through other assorted methods.

But according to a team of computer scientists at the University of Washington, the price you pay for utilizing such services is a loss of privacy--as well as a reliance on a corporate third party to take care of you.

That's why the team has come up with its own alternative, which it is calling Adeona, the name for the Roman goddess of safe returns.

The idea behind Adeona, according to Tadayoshi Kohno and Gabriel Maganis, who gave a talk about the project at the Gnomedex conference here Saturday, is to give people a method for safeguarding their laptops that relies neither on proprietary commercial software nor the centralized servers of the companies that provide such software.

Adeona, they said, is the world's first free, open-source laptop-tracking system, and one that can be installed by users themselves, and which doesn't require a corporate intermediary.

The team is also developing a version of its software for iPhones, though it isn't ready for public use yet.

To Kohno, the danger associated with commercial laptop-tracking services is that it's never possible to know for sure that someone at a company that makes such software wouldn't exploit the company's possession of your personal information--and access to what's on your laptop--for personal gain. Or, he said, that information could be subpoenaed in court cases. … Read more

Inilex one-ups LoJack for GPS car security [Video]

Announced today at Demo 07, security company Inilex is launching its own GPS car security system. Like competitor Lo Jack's early warning system, Inilex has a GPS hardware unit that's installed in your vehicle and alerts you if your car is moving when you're not in it. The unit also lets you know how fast your car is going. You can secure your vehicle via phone or a Web-based interface. What's really cool is that Inilex has created a way to make your own perimeters called "geo fences." Going outside of or (in some … Read more