Pray, find your stolen laptop
Prey helps you find your stolen laptop by sending timed reports to your email with a bunch of information of its whereabouts. This includes the general status of the computer, a list of running programs and active connections, fully-detailed network and wifi information, a screenshot of the running desktop and — in case your laptop has an integrated webcam — a picture of the thief.
Prey can use a web URL to check if it should generate and send the report, so you have a way of alerting remotely the program whenever your laptop disappears. It can (and should) be run as root so it doesn’t depend on an active user session to run, but only on a succesful boot.
You may be thinking “but what’s the point of this program if the guy will probably just format the thing right away?” and you’re completely right. However, experience shows that thieves tend to look in stolen computers for valuable information, so there’s actually a chance you can catch the guy (and there’s even some succesful cases!).
Besides, if by using Prey you can keep alive a tiny bit of hope that you’ll recover your computer, isn’t it already worth it?
