prey

Tracking device for your laptop

Prey is a lightweight application that will help you track and find your laptop if it ever gets stolen. The script runs at a specified interval in your machine, and checks for a specified URL in the web. If the URL exists it means the computer/laptop has been stolen, and thus goes through the information gathering routine and sends all that info through to a previously defined email address. You can also not define a URL and in that case the program will send the data every time it runs. You can also use the Prey web control panel (control.preyproject.com) to manage the computer state, as well as toggling different modules for triggering certain behaviours remotely. In this case you don't have to worry about the URL thing since it takes care of that for you. You only need to register and insert the API and Device keys in the Prey configuration.