Laptop thieves thwarted by tracking system

By Dave Nixon

Laptop tracking systems are successful, and Absolute Software has a real-world instance to add to its PR armory. The security tracking company’s LoJack system has been used to seize alleged laptop thieves at a US airport.

Three men, all baggage handlers, were arrested at Tampa International Airport after a shipped laptop via Continental Airlines did not turn up at its destination. For the huge majority of laptops, this would have been the end of the road, but this particular machine was fitted with Absolute’s Computrace LoJack for Laptops, a hardware-based tracking device.

One of the accused is suspected to have sold the stolen machine to an associate for $350, a relative of whose used it to access a MySpace account in the days after its loss, oblivious that the very act of connection to the Internet would be adequate to lead investigators to the machine, the laptop connected back to the company’s monitoring centre, informing staff that it was ‘in use’.

Police said they had recovered an additional laptop from the residence of one of the accused, in addition to a wide variety of other devices, indicating that the theft was not a rarity.

The quantity of laptops fitted with systems such as LoJack is miniature when set against the total number sold. Absolute has said in the past that it has recovered several thousand for customers but trends are beginning to alter. This week the company announced that it had established an agreement to have its Computrace system integrated with Intel’s Centrino laptop platform, so such technology could one day become a regular feature of laptops for anyone prepared to pay the subscription.

Absolute maintains that the additional cost of buying a laptop fitted with tracking technology is more than repaid in terms not only of recovered hardware but theft prevention. The company moreover offers money-back guarantees on some of its security tracking products, including Lojack, as an extra inducement.