The XTool Computer Tracker. Software based transmitter for tracking and recovering stolen computers. Sounds like a steal. [Update: Check out the comment from Christian for an interesting free alternative.]
When a computer is connected to the Internet or to a phone line the XTool Computer Tracker sends a signal to our monitoring network. The signal received contains all the required information needed to pinpoint the location of the computer. XTool Computer Tracker counts on its worldwide Internet monitoring coverage and unique dial-up monitoring coverage in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, UK and USA. The location of your computer is captured whether your business takes you from state to state or country to country.
Ferrety reader Christian Jensen had problems logging in to the comments and sent them to me directly via email. Interesting stuff, so here they are for the record. Thanks Christian. :-)
——————————-
I have created my own tool to track my computer.
Anyone can .. it’s free and it works on any computer, any os, with any firewall , anywhere ..
The only requirement is that you can browse the web .. so if you see this, it will work for you.
It’s simple :
1) Signup with a Dynamic DNS service. I use dyndns.dk but there are others. It’s completely free.
2) Setup your computer to update your IP with the dynamic dns service – you can do this in any way you like. I created a windows toolbar with the URL to my crontab URL (its an url on dyndns that i can view and it will automatically update my ip) I then resized it too the minimum size and disabled the text and title and hid
it next to another toolbar.
The Internet Explorer settings control how often this is updated .. the standard setting refreshes the page every 15 minutes which mean that on the first load of the page .. on startup , and every 15 minutes after that my ip
is quitely being updated in the background.
This way I always know the ip of my computer, no matter its physical location.
Should my PC be stolen the police can contact the ISP that the IP belongs to, get the physical address and go pickup my computer and the thief. All you need is someway to post your IP online automaticly.. You can use a toolbar like me , set the updateurl as your homeurl (but a thief might spot that) , use wget (it’s available for many platforms, not just unix) from a startup script, use a updatetool specificly written for the dns service you choose .. etc ..
——————————–