Hello.

After my camera got stollen at the new years eve party, i thought that someday somebody would steal my laptop, and it's pretty expensive.

So i thought, there has to be a way of tracking it down by using the wireless and ethernet adapter [or whatever it's called, i never knew] adresses.

If so, what info sould i write down for safe keeping?
A friend of mine tracked me by my phone's IMEI, but he's not around to ask him about this. So, if that was possible, than this sould be easier.

Thank you.

Hi chrisj,
Do you have a web server? or a hosting space?

0 cost solution: Write your own (hidden) tool to send the ip address and other information you may require to a specific PHP on the net every connection or every x minutes. (This is easily bypassable, but you would just require the thief to connect to the internet with your laptop once, to get a rough idea of where your laptop is).

This is of course something you can do as a small challenge and it could work well against people not interested in your laptop (someone who just finds it).

Keep in mind that :
1) Police hardly tracks such cases
2) The ip geo location is not reliable

You better full encrypt your hard drive with Truecrypt and watch it constantly.

@chrisj  Yup.

I would also add Identity theft. Imagine how is it would get for a terrorist to have access to a stolen laptop even for a few hours.

This is going to get even more serious with smartphones that are more and more capable of doing all sorts of things.

<chuckle>  chrisj...

Last time I checked, Prey was still free:

http://preyproject.com/

The issue of course is that it has to be installed before your laptop gets stolen.   

If all else fails, attach a kensingtion lock to your arm