When a thief opens your laptop, he could get a shock when it starts to shout "Help, I've been stolen!" or, perhaps, something ruder. But that's one of the options provided by Front Door Software's $30 Retriever program for Windows XP and Vista.
The software displays your contact details and lets you make the finder or thief an offer, such as "$50 for my safe return". However, if you log on to a web site to say your PC is missing or stolen, that message will appear in a red and yellow on the laptop's screen. It reappears every 30 seconds, to be really annoying. You also get the option to switch on a second password prompt.
In the background, Retriever tries to connect via Wi-Fi to report its loss.
And now it has the option to sing out a pre-recorded message: "Help, this laptop is reported lost or stolen. If you are not my owner, please report me now." If you want something stronger, you can record it yourself.
There's nothing new about start-up messages, of course: many people substituted their own wav file, perhaps taken from a movie, for the Windows start-up sound. For a while, my PC said, in a robot voice: "Thankyou for turning me on."
Other laptop protection software allows users to erase data remotely, lock the machine, or use the built-in webcam, if there is one. For example, Absolute's LoJack (for Mac and Windows) lets you erase the hard drive, while GadgetTrak's MacTrak (for Mac) provides the same Wi-Fi positioning as Apple's iPhone. MacTrack can also send images from the stolen laptop by email, or upload them to a Flickr account. The same company offers GadgetTrak for Windows Search & Destroy.
Orbicule Undercover can transmit a picture of the thief every 6 minutes. It can also use the Mac's text-to-speech feature to cry out that it has been stolen, or use any other message you type in, if it finds itself in a Wi-Fi hotspot with a known address, such as an Apple Store.
One problem with this type of software is that a thief with IT skills can try to get around it. This is why some companies use CompuTrace, the corporate version of LoJack. The CompuTrace agent is built into the BIOS chip of many Windows notebooks from companies such as Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba. This means it can still work if the thief changes the operating system or even replaces the hard drive.
High-value laptops are relatively easy to lose, or to steal, so this is one type of software we can expect to grow. And as more gadgets become internet-connected, we'll see tracking software added to a growing number of digital cameras, camcorders, smart phones, MP3 players and similar devices.
