Prey is a small free piece of software that is designed to protect personal and company laptops from theft and enable easy recovery if they do happen to wind up in the possession of a criminal.
The website sets out the software's aims...
'Prey lets you keep track of your phone or laptop at all times, and will help you find it if it ever gets lost or stolen. It's lightweight, open source software, and free for anyone to use. And it just works.'
So how does it work and why should you use it for company laptops?
The install is clean and easy to achieve and the nice little piece of software just sits on your laptop doing not much at all until the point of panicked realisation... 'OH MY WORD MY LAPTOP HAS BEEN STOLEN/LEFT ON A TRAIN/ABANDONED WHILST I WAS HAVING THAT SNEAKY CUP OF TEA AT BURGER KING.
You then login to your control panel with the email and password you used when you set it up and click the missing button.
The software will then activate and as soon as somebody turns you laptop on and connects to the Internet it will start sending you information on where the laptop is. If you have a built in webcam the software will even provide a photo of the person using it.
The UK police recently recovered a laptop stolen during the London riots, after the software was activated by its owner. After just one day the owner had enough evidence for the police and when the offender turned it on again the police raided his house to find him sat on the sofa with the stolen laptop on his knee. He was subsequently prosecuted for handling stolen goods and the laptop returned to its rightful owner. Just one of several successful stories for the project so far.
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