Well. I'm in Nashville away from home, and I get a call saying that where I live was burglarized. I already took care of my financial stuff, most it. I was wondering if there's a way I can track or search for it's MAC address whenever the person who has it, logs on the Internet? Is there such a thing?
It might go without saying, but make sure to change ALL your passwords as well. As far as tracking goes, it is very difficult unless you have the right kind of applications running. If you have something that starts up and logs into a service (e.g. an IM, VPN), then you might be able to track IP access back to the thief's ISP. However, that would probably require legal intervention to get help from the application service or ISP. MAC addresses usually won't get you anywhere unfortunately.
There are a few tools you can leave running - if you don't respond to the challenge with the appropriate response every x days/hours then it pings out as many details as it can to an email address. Some of them are 'stealthy', so you can't tell they're running at all. Great if you have a laptop with a webcam in the frame, you can give pictures of the thief to law enforcement. Unfortunately they all need to be installed before it gets stolen Stone
ugh, that's for a MAC system... One thing different now is that I found the service tag number for the Dell laptop on my PC. I gave that to the case worker, since that is as unique as the Serial Number, and less likely to get taken off. I'll be scoping out the pawn shops this weekend.
If the asset tag on the laptop is taken off, I believe that the number can still be found in the BIOS. Unless the BIOS has been completely replaced or hacked to remove it (REALLY unlikely for a quick grab-and-go), then you could use that as a basis of ownership.
Get a Dell business system, it has (optional) tracking devices, i.e. CompuTrace LoJack http://www.lojackforlaptops.com/
Ewww! Icky! Seriously though, most recovery software is useless without having already installed it. As it's a Dell, I'd report it with the serial number and hope.
