An open source alternative to laptop LoJack
Posted by Peng on 25 August 2008
Car owners know all about LoJack, the service that can use a hidden box to help find your car when it’s lost or stolen, and techies know that it’s also available for laptop computers. But what do you do if you’d really rather not use proprietary software? Or maybe you’d just rather not let a centralized server, which could get hacked, to have info about you and your laptop?
Enter Adeona, an open source system for tracking your lost and stolen laptop. Named after the Roman goddess of safe returns, Adeona is also a free service, requiring only the downloading and installation of a small piece of software for Linux, OSX or Windows. What could be the best part is that it doesn’t need a centralized server like LoJack needs.
Cnet’s Daniel Terdiman reports from the Gnomedex conference that it does require a bit of tech skills, and a tech-savy thief could get around it fairly easily.
Since it’s available for Linux users it should work with little to no problem for netbooks as well as full size notebook computers.
It isn’t theft prevention, but any way you look at it, this could be a godsend for laptop owners. I just wish it was out a few years ago when my laptop was stolen. You can bet my next laptop will have it, and I may just put it on my desktop computer as well.
brainwashed said
Too bad it can’t use webcams on linux yet.
Jason said
Hmmm … too bad it’s not free software
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/248782
Peng said
Actually it is free (as in no cost), Jason. There are simply some licensing issues that need to be addressed before it can be packaged for Ubuntu’s repositories. That could be a simple thing to fix once the devs realize it’s a “bug”. I trust someone has filed a bug on it with the devs so they’re aware of it.