If you lost your laptop....

[psd99]

Hi all,

I was wondering if you could help me out a bit.

Recently I lost a USB memory stick. I wasn't too bothered about the stick itself more the contents.

The stick had a backup of my photos, my documents which all are sensitive information. Also had a backup of my phone numbers and text messages. I was upset because I had lost this is a public place. Who knows what someone is planning on me now?

So it got me thinking deeply.

If my laptop got stolen they could have it all. All my documents, photos, even websites such as this. They could come on here pretend to be me. Or even use paypal, ebay the list is endless.

So it got me thinking about my laptop.

I've put a password lock just after bios and one on the windows screen. But will this be enough to prevent for the theif to get my information?

The real question here is how can someone get past that bios password? Is it a simple thing of taking out the bios battery or something?

I understand they could put in a disk and resintall windows but that's a good thing for me because it means they will need to format the drive.

In essence what other preventions can I take to stop them getting access to my information?

 

[Abarbarian]

Why don't you download this and use it to see if you can acess your laptop with it's security enabled .

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

 

[psd99]

thanks

how about some software that can run in the background from bios.

Once connected this software should be able to tell where the laptop is via a ip address that could be tracked by the police.

Is this possible?

 

[Ian]

Yes, that bios IP tracing already exists I don't know how it works, but I've seen a few laptops sold with this feature.

You can get biometric USB sticks if you are worried about losing one again, but I don't know how good they are. I'm pretty sure there are password-protected ones too.

 

[psd99]

lol so I am not going senile! woo hoo

well I wish I could get something like that because if it ever went missing along with other stuff
it could be like a tracking device! Find the laptop probably mean find the rest of my stuff!

 

[Abarbarian]

U3 offer this for their sticks . Sensible folk encrypt sensitive data on usb sticks . Its apparently easy to encrypt the whole drive . You do have to remember yet another passsword though .


http://software.u3.com/Product_Details.aspx?ProductId=275&Selection=7&Lang=en-US


Google threw up these

http://www.tracemylaptop.com/

http://3d2f.com/smartreviews/0-343-inspice-trace-seek-your-laptop-read.shtml

 

[bodhi]

I posted once before about this I think. On all my USB drives I stick a tiny notepad file on it with my name and phone number. That was if you lose it, if it is an honest person that finds it they can contact you and return it. I guess the flip side is that if it's a dishonest person, they have more information about you!! haha.

 

[Taffycat]

I have just received one of my regular "Windows Secrets" Newsletters, which might be of interest to you Psd99, the feature is about making your PC hard to steal, but easy to recover, which can be found under the heading: "Secure your computers from real world threats"

Hope it helps

 

[floppybootstomp]

As a side note, just think of how many posters we get here asking how to bypass a password or defeat the Bios protection.

Usually accompanied by an excuse like 'I forgot my password' or 'My Granny gave it to me and she's passed on'.

Now, how many of those could be thieves hoping to get into a stolen computer?

And how many of those posters are usually just one-offs and we never hear from them again?

Granted, some are genuine but it makes you think don't it?

You've certainly made me think.

I think I willl soon backup any sensitive personal information to an encrypted USB stick, online passwords, PIN numbers and the like.

 

[psd99]

thanks for the information all I agree flopps most of these people probably partaking in illegal activites but we will never know.

abarbarian thanks for the information software downloads

bodhi I dont like the idea of posting my information on there i might stop putting on sensitive information from now on

n taffy cat thanks for the read that looks good

 

[Taffycat]

Losing a laptop, USB drive, etc., would be horrendous enough, but on the subject of using password protection, it is not only important to make them "strong" but to avoid sticking to just one or two that are "easy to remember." Sometimes the risk can come from "online" and leave one's private details just as exposed.

A quick example ... someone posting on another Forum, mentioned that they had typed their username into a search engine. Something lots of folk do out of curiosity, however, this particular poster was surprised, to see that one of the results was displaying several usernames and passwords, beneath the page link...... and a list of maybe a few hundred or more, after they clicked on the link!

The person thought that they should inform someone who would be able to "lay down the law." Forum members volunteered various suggestions and the original poster set about "reporting" the offending website; they said they intended to "name-and-shame" when all had been resolved. (the company concerned still remained anonymous at this stage.)

After waiting a week, with no response from "the powers that be" the poster decided (very unwisely, I thought) to name and shame anyway. The aforementioned list becoming available to anyone who read the thread and followed the link putting a considerable number of innocent people at risk of being hacked, spammed and goodness knows what else, as a result.

The simplest answer, of course, was to contact the owner of the website, who was clearly appalled to learn of the problem and took immediate action to resolve the situation. I still cannot help wondering how many of those folk had their privacy invaded prior to the website owner finding out about the exposed client list... if only by a few nosey-parkers who couldn't resist peeping into private accounts, simply because they could. If some of them were using the same password for numerous websites.........you get the idea

Psd99 - I hope you won't consider this to be a hi-jack - it seemed to me, to be "related"

 

[psd99]

good point taffycat

perhaps it's a bad thing to have the same password for very sensitive setups

i'd be more worried if someone got my internet banking password than a forum.
perhaps this could be a wake up call for everyone that reads this, it's important to incoperate passwords that are difficult to discover.

What was your first cat's name? these sort of questions are abysmal and are easy to crack in general conversion.
you might have this setup on some answer somewhere and get casually asked this, without realising that that is the question you setup on some site!

be careful all.

 

[Abarbarian]

http://www.roboform.com/

This is great for forums and suchlike , you get a ten site manager in the free version . Saves a lot of typing .

 

[bodhi]

One idea which comes from the article posted by Taffycat which expanded on my idea was to mark your property with an email address and offer a reward if returned. As you said, you don't want to put any personal information on it, so why not open a gmail/hotmail account which you just use for these purposes? You don't have to have any personal information on at all.

 

[Waynos_Face]

I recently left the employ of Her Majestys British Army, where i was employed as a Royal Military Policeman, some of the jobs we dealt with would include child pornography cases.
So we would take the computer of anyone arrested for these offences. On a USB Stick we had a program that would "unlock" virtually any computer no matter what the decryption in about ten seconds, same goes for the files as well.
These applications are not exactly mainstream but they do exist in the hands of criminals (as we caught a few). Contrary to popular belief there are a few exceptionally clever people in the Army and not all of them good.

The safest way to protect your sensitive material?

Burn it to 2 DVDs/CDs, keep one at home and one in your car, write " the best of James Last " on the one in car. No-one will steal that.

There are lots of interesting ways in which technology can be applied to steal information. If anyone is interested in knowing how to prevent these then let me know.

Don't wanna hijack this thread too much and i mean no disrespect to Mr last. Lol.

 

[bodhi]

I think you should elaborate, I think people would be quite interested in the methods of stealing / protecting information. Obviously without advocating the stealing part!

 

[Waynos_Face]

Ok, will dig out my Counter-Electronic-Espionage manual and start a new post.

 

[Me__2001]

Ok, will dig out my Counter-Electronic-Espionage manual and start a new post.

i think we can learn a lot from you judging by your previous post