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don2007
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
1970 Posts
Status: online |
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Playwell
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Netherlands
4818 Posts
Status: offline |
 Posted - 08/13/2012 : 07:47:24 AM
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Did not hear about a bios generated service in Windows. New for me.
Why mess with it if you did not get the laptop illegally. I understand you need to get rid of abundant applications, but I'd love to know where my laptop went after someone took it. |
'People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. '
Quote by Isaac Asimov
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don2007
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
1970 Posts
Status: online |
Posted - 08/13/2012 : 4:59:07 PM
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That was going to be my next point. It has already been discussed here about having a script, in startup, that sends you an email, with the current external IP address. That way, if your laptop was stolen, you would know where to find it. The difference between the two is, the script is yours & it's working for you. Computrace, on the other hand, could act as a trojan. That's the complaint about it.
Edit: Here's a simple command that works on Unix & Linux to have the IP of your laptop sent to you in an email. On Linux, you must run:
sudo apt-get install mailutils first.
curl http://www.clanspum.net/~houdini/ip.cgi | mail -s 'my IP' don@myemail.whatever.
I just have to add that as a cron job (scheduled task) in the windows world & I have to convert it into a batch file to run as a scheduled task in windows. Of course, the commands will be different. Does anyone what to take a crack at that?
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Dyslexic people untie. |
Edited by - don2007 on 08/13/2012 8:42:00 PM |
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joe_elway
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
Ireland
7393 Posts
Status: offline |
Posted - 08/14/2012 : 1:55:03 PM
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| Had a presentation from them a few years ago. Were told that many manufacturers include the circuitry, but it had to be turned on by a license purchase. Even had some stories about stolen US military laptops in Iraq being tracked and leading to terror cells. |
Aidan Finn
MCSE, MVP (Virtual Machine)
IT Blog: http://www.aidanfinn.com
My Photography: http://www.aidanfinnphoto.com/
Books: WS2012 Hyper-V Installation & Config Guide, MSFT Private Cloud Computing
Twitter: http://twitter.com/joe_elway |
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don2007
Honorable But Hopeless Addict
1970 Posts
Status: online |
Posted - 08/15/2012 : 09:11:16 AM
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I certainly don't want to pay for something that I can easily do myself, for free. So far, I have the commands working on FreeBSD & Linux Mint by editing the /etc/crontab file, on each. I'm not sure what mail server the mail -s command is using since I didn't designate one. I have to research that.
Now, I want to make it work on Windows 7 Professional. I can try Powershell, VBS or I might be able to use crontab for Windows except that Windows 7 isn't listed as one of the OSes. If I can use it, it might save writing a long script, for a scheduled task.
http://cronw.sourceforge.net/
Finally, if the US military laptops are being traced to terror cells somewhere, either the military isn't very good at security or it was an ingenious plan to locate the terror cells. I hope it's the latter. |
Dyslexic people untie. |
Edited by - don2007 on 08/15/2012 09:28:24 AM |
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Computrace Lojack
