What Cost a Stolen Phone and Laptop

By David Eedle |

In a previous post I wrote about the software tools that I’ve found over the years that genuinely improve my working life. My MacBook Pro and iPhone are surgically implanted into my world, I think I noted that I spend more time with my laptop than with Fiona and the kids, which on one level is a worrying consideration. Although our 12 year old daughter may possibly beat me, especially on the weekend, when she’ll happily sit for hours juggling dozens of MSN instant message windows as she trades gossip and keeps up conversations with friends from school here in Melbourne, and others further afield.

My iPhone packed it in a couple of months ago and I had to endure a four day wait for a warranty replacement handset, you should have seen the dribble from my mouth as I slowly went mildly nutty.

Granted our household is probably a little over the top, you should hear the rumble of discontent when the internet connection drops out, it starts with faint yells in the further reaches of the house, then crescendos as everyone moves to hunt me down in my study, where the ADSL router sits, demanding connectivity be restored.

The internet going off the air is usually just a temporary blip in the household’s harmony. But how would you feel if you didn’t have access to your laptop and phone – because it was lost or stolen? And have you considered the cost – and I don’t mean to replace the equipment, or the emotional expense. If a thief sat at your computer, what information would they be able to access? What would the value be? And what’s the cost to you not having the data? What would be retrievable from backup, and what unique information would you need to recreate?

According to research by Ponemon Institute, sponsored by Intel, the average value of a lost laptop is $US49,246, taking into account factors such as replacement cost, detection, forensics, data breach, lost intellectual property costs, lost productivity and legal, consulting and regulatory expenses.

There are statistics floating around that quote quite remarkable numbers about the number of laptops stolen or lost each year. One piece of research from a few years ago suggests something like 10,000 laptops are stolen each year from airports in the USA. I’ve seen that research questioned, but irrespective of the quantum (how many laptops being stolen is too many?) the fact remains, you have every likelihood of losing your laptop, either by accident or a thief’s design. It could be from your car, your home, or while you are travelling. You are also unlikely to get the gear back.

What will you do? How will you recover?

Like insurance, taking precautions after the fact is not an option. You need to consider the implications of a loss or theft, and implement a plan.

Here’s what I have done.

iPhone

Apple comes to the rescue straightaway. Sign up for a Mobile Me membership, it’s an annual subscription, which gives you a mac.com email address, online backups, iDisk (a hosted virtual hard drive) plus other goodies. But the neatest bit is the iPhone security system.

From the Mobile Me web site you can pull up a Google map showing where your iPhone is located. It can be as accurate as a blinking blue dot over a specific location, or the more general encompassing circle depicting a locale.

Apple comes to the rescue to find lost and stolen iPhones

They give you three action options:

1. Display a Message or Play a Sound – show a message on the screen of your iPhone and play a sound.
2. Remote Passcode Lock – setup a PIN password so nobody can use the phone
3. Remote Wipe – kill all the data on the phone

Seems to me these functions pretty much cover all the bases. A pity Fiona doesn’t have an iPhone – she left her Blackberry in San Francisco, and only realised when we arrived back home in Melbourne. I called the phone company, and asked them to cancel the SIM card, and forward all her calls to me, while we worked out how to retrieve the handset. But guess what! The phone company said if we blocked the SIM, we couldn’t forward calls. So we had to leave the phone active as it wended its way home via courier. How silly.

MacBook

I use a product called Undercover. They claim to recover 96% of all stolen Macs that were subsequently connected to the Internet. Undercover uses the built-in insight camera to snap mug shots of the thief, and it transmits screenshots from the stolen Mac to retrieve more information about the thief’s identity.

Undercover is software that runs in the background on your computer. It’s difficult to see, and has no effect on your daily computer use.

Undercover claims a very high recovery rate for stolen Macs

However, if your Mac is stolen, you report the theft to the Undercover people. Their system then kicks into gear as soon as your Mac connects to the Internet. It transmits its location. It takes screenshots of whatever’s on your screen. And it uses the inbuilt iSight camera to snap photos of the thief.

If none of this enables you to recover your Mac, plan B swings into action, the Mac is rendered unusable, and a large message displays on the screen advising that the computer has been stolen.

These are not services available only for Apple users. There are several firms offering similar products for Windows-based computers. And the major retailers are taking the hint. For example, Dell since 2007 has been offering a tracking and recovery system for their laptops called Computrace LoJack for Laptops, through a partnership with Absolute Software.

Don’t leave it until it’s too late. You’ll regret not taking precautions. Take a moment now, pause, and try and imagine firstly how long you could survive without your laptop and phone, and secondly, what the overall cost – monetary, emotional and workload – of not having your equipment in your hands. Now take action!

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