How to track, locate and recover stolen gadgets or devices (laptops, cameras, etc)

Posted on December 1, 2007 at 4:18 pm

Everyone and their grandma today has an iPod or some other kind of music playing device, except for me. So you can imagine if I were a thief, I would have a lot of different opportunities to steal your iPod, iPhone, iTouch, cell phone, media player, BlackBerry, or other device pretty easily. And I’m sure that has happened to a LOT of people already. Most of the time people have no idea who stole it and it’s basically lost forever.

However, if you take some time out right after you purchase your device, you can actually track, locate and recover a stolen device, including devices like USB sticks, external hard drives, PSP’s, cell phones, digital cameras and lots more. I personally think these services are essential since most new gadgets are fairly expensive, yet very small, making them easy targets for pick pockets, etc.

You can check out two cool web sites that allow you to install software onto your devices and then will track them whenever they are plugged into a computer or connected to the Internet.

GadgetTrak is by far my favorite and has been around for a long time. You can even use GadgetTrak on Apple computers to find and recover stolen computers. PhoneBak is the service is provides to track PDAs and cell phones by allowing you to configure a set number of authorized SIM cards for your device. If an unauthorized SIM card is put into your phone, an SMS alert will be sent to you.

The cool thing about GadgetTrak is that you can even see where the device has been taken over time in a Google Map:

Once you report it as stolen, you’ll also see other details about the location of the device including IP address, computer name, user name on the computer, location (country/state/city), ISP, and other information.

GadgetTrak is not free, but it’s definitely worth it for those expensive little digital cameras, HD camcorders, and PDAs. Think of it as an insurance policy because most warranties do not cover stolen devices, only device problems or accidental damage. For one device, it’s around $13 to protect it.

For Macs, GadgetTrak has a feature called Verey, it will record video via a capture device called iSight. Neat! Anyone steals your Mac, you can freaking record them! Nice.

Another service that does pretty much the same thing as GadgetTrak is called iHound. The nice thing about iHound, however, is that it’s currently free of charge! Eventually they are planning on charging, but somewhere around $1 per device, which is a lot cheaper than GadgetTrak. On the bad side, though, iHound does not support Macs or cell phones, so if you want to protect those devices, you’ll have to use GadgetTrak.

They mostly support Flash Drives, MP3 Players like the iPod, and a few digital cameras. Once you install the software onto your USB device, your device can be located all the time. You can actually track the location down to the zip code!

So if you’re looking for a way to track your expensive devices and protect them from thieves, go ahead and give iHound a shot since it’s free. GadgetTrak seems to support way more devices and is for those really serious about protecting their gadgets! Enjoy!

[tags]recover stolen gadgets, track stolen gadgets, anti-theft systems, recover stolen macs[/tags]

» Filed Under Computer Tips

Comments

14 Responses to “How to track, locate and recover stolen gadgets or devices (laptops, cameras, etc)”

Rocky said on : December 1st, 2007 at 8:30 pm

Looks like Gadgettrak is more powerful with a wider coverage on devices.

By the way, iHound don’t work on Vista.

Rohan said on : December 2nd, 2007 at 12:44 pm

I couldn’t contact you so I thought I’d comment on this brilliant article.
I subscribe to Brown Thoughts, and he recently put a post about your post on his website entitled, How to track, locate, and recover stolen gadgets or devices. Now I have a new SE W610i and I wanted to protect it so I found a free service that did it.
I am interested in other services so I clicked your link. I found your article very interesting and I might go and buy the service from Gadget Trak. Since you have such a good website, I was wondering if you’d like to do a link exchange with my website. Reply whether or not you’d like to.

Robert Wiley said on : December 2nd, 2007 at 3:10 pm

The iHound site is not working, it just hangs when I click on the link. Guess you get what you pay for.

I like the idea of at least putting in thieves minds that these devices can communicate home, maybe it will make them think twice when stealing gadgets.

Natalia said on : August 8th, 2008 at 1:05 am

I lost my phone and I don’t have any sowtware on it. Is it gone for good?

akishore said on : August 8th, 2008 at 10:04 am

Natalia, it’s probably gone for good if you didn’t have any software installed on it before it was lost. You have to install these programs before you lose it. Sorry!

ross smith said on : April 3rd, 2009 at 9:09 pm

If you own a x-box or ps3 and it gets stolen. They can be tracked by the account that you have created on them (eg. Playstation network)Sony and Microsoft will cooperate but only with the police. So if you can get the police to help you it can be done.

domeniu said on : June 11th, 2009 at 2:02 pm

What can we do if I did not enable protection before losing the device? Something based on an IMEI number?

Ethernet Cable Installer said on : September 15th, 2009 at 8:55 pm

My few months old bb bold got stolen just last week, so I know the pain now and want to share my experiences.
As this happened I’ve learned a few fact that was clueless about.

First, once your phone is stolen it’s pretty much gone and there’s not much you can do, unless you have insurance or some lojack software, which has may or may not help you get the phone back.

My carrier (ATT) and any U.S. carrier for that matter don’t keep track of IMEI numbers of phones that were stolen. So technically, my phone may already be in use on ATT network…

I had latitude on that phone and watched it move on the map of Philly until it stopped somewhere in the hood and this was the end of it. Even I had the exact coordinates, so what? Would I have gone and knocked on somebody’s door? I don’t’ think so.

I had a password enabled on my phone and wonder now how safe the data on it was.

Ahmad said on : December 9th, 2009 at 11:11 am

Is this tracking in real time? Also, what if they simply format the computer? No more tracking after that right? I guess it’s better than nothing…thanks!

Reinhard Holzner said on : January 21st, 2010 at 4:52 am

Hello – one software that you can use to track your mobile phone in case of theft or loss is Theft Aware. Just hit theftaware.com for further details! best regards, Reinhard

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