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]

The team at Mac 360 "stole" a Mac in order to test Orbicule's Undercover, new anti-theft software for a Mac. David Chartier described what Undercover does in an earlier post. The gist of it is that Undercover tries to locate a stolen Mac by taking and transmitting screenshots. If the Mac has an iSight, Undercover will even take photos of the user and send those back to Orbicule. What if the Mac isn't connected to the Internet? In that case, Undercover simulates a hardware meltdown, in the hope that the thief will take the computer to an authorized reseller for repair.

To test whether these novel tracking schemes are likely to get your Mac back to you, Mac 360 staged a test theft of a PowerBook. The result is a two-part keystone cops post. Their conclusion? I'll let you guess.

A friend of mine sent me a link to a new piece of security/Mac-tracking software called Undercover. Essentially, this software runs in the background on your Mac and periodically pings an Undercover Recovery Center. In the event of a stolen Mac, you can contact the center and they can kick the software into gear, collecting IP information and, interestingly, screenshots of what's happening on your stolen Mac. The idea is that if the thief is actually using his undeserved new prize, he could, sooner or later, give away details of his identity, say with a chat name or checking email. If this "Plan A" fails, the Undercover Center can then enact "Plan B," causing the Mac to act like it's experiencing hardware failure which, by their logic, would prompt the thief to either sell it or send it in for service. While I'm not sure how they could determine the Mac has again changed hands, let alone come into the care of someone who would help, Undercover could then make the Mac display a message stating that it has been stolen, along with contact information and the offer of a Finder's fee.

While this sounds like an ideal chain of events following the theft of your Mac, Damien brought up a couple great points as to why this software might have a limited, if at all, rate of success. First, the typical computer thief might find a way to erase the stolen computer (which makes me wonder what kind of people Damien hangs out with). Second, if you're a portable notebook user concerned about security and theft, you probably don't walk away from the book while logged in, and (hopefully) you don't set your book to automatically log in anyway. As far as I understand how this software works, both of these practices would render Undercover useless, as I'm pretty sure you need to be logged in for the software to work its magic.

Ultimately, you should probably check out more of Undercover's abilities and inner workings before jumping on it. Orbicule, the makers of Undercover, offer a customer service/sales online chat option if you'd like to talk to them more about it. At the end of the day, it's at least nice to see some new thinking (even if it might not be fool-proof) in terms of portable computer security.