Ever since I had my good ol’ MacBook stolen from within my flat because somebody forgot to lock the kitchen window, I’ve been using Undercover from Orbicule on all my other Mac’s.
The reason is clear: It gives me a better chance of ever recovering my Mac, than if I didn’t have the software installed.
Here’s what Undercover can do for you:
- Accurately locate your stolen Mac.
- See what happens on your stolen Mac (screenshots etc.).
- See who’s using your Mac via the built-in iSight webcam.
- Fake hardware failure, hopefully for the thief to sell the Mac online or bring it in for repairs (where the serial number should be flagged as stolen).
- Full screen message, scream & shout. “I’ve been stolen!”.
If Undercover fails to assist you or the police in recovering your Mac, you will get your money back for purchasing Undercover ($49).
With Snow Leopard, Undercover also runs in 64 bit mode, making it the first theft-recovery software in the world to run in the faster 64 bit mode, allowing it to use more advanced security techniques to fend off attacks.
If you’re already using Undercover on your Mac and you’ve just upgraded to Snow Leopard, or plan on doing it, you need to reinstall Undercover to work properly with Snow Leopard.
If you’re not yet rocking Undercover on your precious Mac, I strongly suggest you take a look at this application (there’s even an iPhone app too!): Orbicule Undercover for Mac.
Feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comments below. I’ll do my best to answer them, even though Undercover is really simple and Orbicule cover most (if not all) the questions in their FAQ.
Does this run similarly to back to my mac via moble me? I’ve heard of some recoveries but hadn’t heard of Undercover before.
.-= Fred H Schlegel´s last blog ..Biomutualism, Breaking Down Silos, and Finding Inspiration =-.
They are two different things with two different objectives, Back To My Mac and Undercover. Where Back To My Mac usually allows you to connect to your Mac whereever it is (there can be network/router issues), and see what’s going on on the desktop and even control it, it doesn’t really help you *that much* in recovering it. Sure there’s been some stories around the interwebs about people getting them back and seeing what the thief was doing and such, but I’d say you have to be lucky too.
Undercover checks every 6 seconds (don’t know why it has to be that often) to see if it’s ID# has been reported stolen. If it has, then it stats uploading screenshots etc., gathering IP address / location (with Core Location from Snow Leopard I assume), even uses the iSight to take a picture of the person using the Mac. Later on it will start to fake hardware errors etc. It’s important though, with Undercover, that you enable the GUEST account without password, so when the thief realises he cannot use the Mac with your own account since he doesn’t have the password, he might try the GUEST account and get in instantly, allowing Undercover to do it’s thing 🙂
I have something similar MacTrack, pretty much the same, but it integrates with Flickr and sends you the exact location using wi-fi positioning. I don’ think back to my mac can do this.
Interesting that it integrates with Flickr, but I don’t hope it publishes the screenshots/images that it takes, for the world to see 🙂
No I don’t think Back To My Mac can do any positioning either, yet.