Filed under: Portables, Software, Security
Undercover: stolen Mac recovery tool
Thinking about recovering your laptop in case of theft? Undercover from Orbicule (we've mentioned it before once or twice) sports a nice additional "feature" in terms of a money-back guarantee. If your Mac is reported stolen Undercover will monitor and report IP addresses that should narrow down the search, as well as take both screenshots and iSight snapshots at regular intervals and send them back. Finally, it will mimic a hardware problem presumably prompting the thief to take it in for repair or sell it, in which case it will display a message indicating that the computer has been stolen, etc. Orbicule is apparently so confident that Undercover will allow you to recover your machine that they're offering a money-back guarantee for the cost of the software if you do not. They have an interesting account of the recovery process in an actual case.
Undercover is $49 ($39 for students; education site licenses are available).
[via Daring Fireball]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tony said 1:34PM on 9-20-2007
That's pretty awesome
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Luigi193 said 1:40PM on 9-20-2007
HOLY CRAP THATS AN AWESOME IDEA!
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Robert Basil said 1:40PM on 9-20-2007
I've been using Undercover since I purchased my Macbook pro 6 months ago. It's great, I don't even notice that it's running (and neither will anyone else if they steal my laptop). :)
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Aaron said 1:43PM on 9-20-2007
Looks like the first time the thief used it was to do a little WiFi web surfing while sitting on the commode.
Way to go.
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5cents said 1:50PM on 9-20-2007
iAlertU is a sorta close free alternative. It's free, yay. It takes iSight pics and emails them to an address of your choice, yay. It doesn't go as far as recording IP addresses or tying into a theft recovery service... :(
Still, it's free like AIDS, so who's complaining!
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Whurm said 1:53PM on 9-20-2007
Holy advertisement disguised as a article. I mean good product, but still.
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Erik said 2:09PM on 9-20-2007
Has Undercover fixed the security flaws uncovered here:
http://blogs.23.nu/c0re/stories/11058/#11074
?
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vormkrijger said 2:12PM on 9-20-2007
http://www.zdziarski.com/projects/maclojack/
thats the same but its FREE
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Drew said 2:38PM on 9-20-2007
So... we can pay for the software, and chances are we won't have our notebook stolen. BUT if it is stolen and the software we paid for doesn't work, they'll give us our money back for the software that we've been paying for so that we can retrieve a stolen laptop? Well hmm, I'll offer the same! Give me twenty bucks, and if someone steals your laptop, I'll give you your twenty bucks back. If they don't, we all win don't we?
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Dan said 2:48PM on 9-20-2007
It's specious reasoning for sure.
"Lisa, I would like to buy your rock," comes to mind...
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William said 2:48PM on 9-20-2007
Wouldn't reformatting the drive and installing a new copy of OS X get rid of the software? Assuming the thief is smart enough to do that first without connecting to the internet, of course.
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Jobjörn said 2:53PM on 9-20-2007
Recently, you could read in a Swedish computer magazine (http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.121210) about an IT guy at a school that installed Undercover on their brand new MacBooks. Then they were stolen.
Two months later, they had been returned, and the thieves were about to be prosecuted. The police said that the information captured by Undercover was very useful.
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Jason said 3:05PM on 9-20-2007
This is good stuff. I use it on my Macbook Pro and you never know its even running.
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niko said 3:16PM on 9-20-2007
Looks like a Microsoft software : takes screenshots without telling you, broadcast your IP, next time it will silently update itself with brand new "features" like testifying against you for downloading "illegal" music on iTMS. Who knows it will not start doing its "duty" BEFORE your nice MBP has been stolen ?? After all, it is designed to be unintrusive...
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Frank said 3:30PM on 9-20-2007
i've been using undercover since i bought my MBP a year and a half ago, and (knock wood) i haven't needed it. but the peace of mind is very worth the price.
and niko (#14), the one BIG difference between this and microsoft software is this software you CHOOSE to install.
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pauLee said 3:51PM on 9-20-2007
@William
You can protect your harddrive agains formating or booting from another device ;-)
@niko
Undervover will start sending all the information only after you have insert your Undercover-ID in their database.
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chris said 5:41PM on 9-20-2007
@pauLee
you can make it harder to reformat or boot from another drive but there are work arounds for those too. no sense revealing them here.
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Ben the Dog said 9:28PM on 9-20-2007
I use this in combination with a firmware password so the drive can't be reformatted easily.
Have been using it for 6 months now, and completely forgot that I had it installed until I read this article.
It's not invasive at all - the only reason I know it's there is that the Activity Monitor picks up a teeny activity from 'uc' a few times every hour.
Great idea and a great tool. I likey.
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Diddle said 7:33PM on 9-21-2007
The thing to keep in mind is that the kind of guy who will steal your laptop is more likely to "fire it up" and see what it can do rather than spend time formatting then wondering where he can get a stolen copy of OSX to install on it.
I also installed Undercover when I bought my brand-new MBP and honestly, I'd rather have spent the few dollars on the software for the potential recovery than to simply kiss 2G's and all my personal data goodbye if my computer gets lifted. Mind you, I also use a cable-lock any time I'm having to "leave" my laptop in an unsecured area but I still think that the service the company provides is worthwhile over the "freebies" which do little more than record IPs / take pictures.
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tedspeed said 8:55AM on 10-03-2007
I just had my MBP stolen and wish I had this running. It's like insurance people think it's a waste of money until "IT" happens to them, then they wish they had it. I'll definitely get it for my next one.
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