Laptop security alarm software

Posted on July 20, 2008 at 5:18 am

Looking for a way to secure your laptop? I always check my house alarm is on before I leave the house. Why? A few months back, I forgot to turn it on, and ended up having a lot of my things stolen.

The concept of a house alarm is very simple – Whenever a person enters a house without authorization, a very loud alarm goes off to signify that the house is being breached. The more complicated, modern systems also send SMS messages to the house owner to tell them their home is being broken into, and the systems sometimes automatically call for the cops.

This is a very old concept indeed, but still very efficient. So, imagine this – An alarm for your laptop. Sometimes when I’m in Starbucks, I take my laptop with me to do my work. Whenever I want to get another latte, I have to take my laptop up to the counter with me, because I’m afraid it’ll be stolen. It’s the same for when I’m in the library; whenever I want to get a book off the shelf, I have to carry my laptop with me to the shelf.

So, here’s a few ways of setting up an alarm for laptops.

Method 1: Laptop Alarm

Laptop Alarm is a program that will emit a very loud sound if somebody attempts to steal your laptop whilst this program is running. Even if your laptop’s sound is muted, it bypasses this, and still plays the very loud sound!

The sound is triggered by these things:

1) The Loss of A/C Power

2) Shutdown/Log Off

3) The unplugging of a mouse

4) Movement of Mouse

Laptop Alarm is also very easy to use. To use it, all you do is run the program, check what triggers you’d like to use, and click Lock Computer. You then get a screen where you can get off the ‘Alarm Screen’ by entering in the password.

Just a word of warning, NEVER EVER TRIGGER THE ALARM OFF WHILST WEARING HEADPHONES. The sound is extremely loud, and may cause your ears some pain. You can also change the sensitivity of the ‘Mouse Movement Trigger’, so that it doesn’t set off by accident. Laptop Alarm is small in size, 100% free, and there is no installation required whatsoever.

Link for this program: http://www.syfer.nl/beta/download.php

Method 2: A.L.A.R.M

This program is, in my opinion, worse than Laptop Alarm. However, if for some reason Laptop Alarm will not work for you, this is a good alternative. It silently sits in the system tray, until the Workstation is locked. Then, if somebody attempts to remove the A/C power, it will emit a very loud sound.

Link for this program: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/alarm

So there’s two methods of protecting your laptop against theft. With these two, you can now heave a heavy sigh of relief, knowing that you’ll never have to claim insurance for your laptop. I do recommend Laptop Alarm over A.L.A.R.M, however, as I think it provides a far higher level of security.

Of course, these are both software solutions for securing your laptop, which can be pretty useless if there is no one around to hear the loud sound. There are many hardware solutions also for securing a laptops, but that’s for another post! Enjoy!

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Comments

6 Responses to “Laptop security alarm software”

Mike said on : July 21st, 2008 at 1:17 pm

From the warning you have about headphones for Laptop Alarm, it sounds like a thief could simply plug their own headphones into your audio jack to prevent the sound from blaring out over the speakers. And if the headphones had a volume control on them, the sound could be muted entirely…?

abhishek said on : July 22nd, 2008 at 5:02 am

quite good application…thanks for sharing

Shmeckle said on : October 9th, 2008 at 10:17 pm

The hell with the headphones, what if someone simply used a headphone plug that has the cord cut? NO sound at all then!
What about that idea folks, JUST the headphones plug, no headphones needed!

David LeMore said on : October 13th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

You raise a interesting point there Shmeckle, just a clipped plug, interesting. Too bad that can’t be by-passed to have no effect. Just a plug would be easy to hide in a would be theifs shirt pocket.

Cosmo said on : November 17th, 2008 at 11:16 pm

Yes, you can use items to avoid the sound, however, the average thief will not know this, all they will see is a laptop on the table.

There is now way to protect yourself from everything, the point is to add hoops any would-be thief will need to jump through in order to get away with your laptop.

For more laptop security info, check out this lifehacker page (it also includes a note for Laptop Alarm)

http://lifehacker.com/5044029/.....ity-system