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July 22, 2008, 09:21 AM ET
Researchers Develop Free Tool to Track Stolen Laptops
Vanishing laptops can cause huge headaches for colleges. Sure, there’s the financial cost of losing a shiny computer, but that’s not the big worry: Since official data such as student records are often loaded onto laptop hard drives, a lost or stolen computer can mean a serious security breach.
A free, open-source program developed by researchers can help find a lost or stolen laptop computer, and its creators say it does so more safely than commercial alternatives.
The program, Adeona, is named after the Roman goddess of safe returns. Many commercial laptop tracking programs require users to give their information to the company selling the software, and some users have worried that the information could be used to track them without their knowledge. Adeona’s creators say their free software is “privacy-preserving,” meaning that only the user has the ability to track the laptop.
The software was built by a group of professors and graduate students from the University of Washington and the University of California’s campuses at San Diego and at Davis. —Jeffrey R. Young
Categories: Security
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