Lost-Stolen Computer Support Group said:
Hello,
My laptop was recently stolen while I was away from home. Before I
leave home, I always set the password on my system. Is it possible for
someone to bypass my password and access the contents of my hard drive?
Probably depends on what password for what application. If you have
really secure protection then the chance is probably very small. But
it is impossible to tell from the description.
Also, is it possible to trace my computer using the MAC address?
I've read about products, supposedly intended to be installed by
the company IT department, that hide themselves very deep in the
machine, can monitor and report employee activity, but more to the
point, when connected to any network will very quietly slip a packet
off to that software vendor's domain and identify the path to the
machine.
The difficulty with you trying to trace your laptop without something
like this seems to be how you are going to get access to sniff all
the network traffic between a fairly large fraction of all the
computers in your greater area and all the hosts that they are
connecting to, and do this for a fairly substantial period of time?
Now if you had left some favorites link that would just be too
delicious for anyone to pass up trying, and clicking on that link
would have connected to your own domain, maybe then you could have
a chance to grab some information about the connection.
