Police fund tracking software for at-risk laptops
Kable
Published: 15 Oct 2008 15:58 BST
Nottinghamshire Police has begun providing funds for people who live in burglary hotspots to install theft-recovery software on their laptops.
The police force is paying for licences for Absolute Software's ComputraceOne, which connects the company's monitoring centre to a machine every 24 hours, and every 15 minutes if it is reported stolen.
This should enable the police to locate any stolen laptops that go online. The force is publicising the move in an attempt to deter thieves in the city, although it has not said how many licences it will fund.
In 2007, there were 665 burglaries in the city in which laptops were stolen. Students are often victims of this type of crime and can lose valuable coursework as a result.
Detective inspector Sean Anderson, who developed the initiative, said: "This software will provide peace of mind for many students and members of the public who are concerned about work and files stored on their laptops. People often forget to back up information on laptops and, if they are stolen, it is lost forever."
He said the information is only tracked in the event of a theft and, as the software is installed at factory level, it can only be disabled by the specialised team at Absolute Software.
"It literally takes a couple of minutes to install the software and we have police teams, student ambassadors and volunteers offering the service to people from [Thursday]," he said.
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"We will be targeting people who buy stolen laptops, executing warrants and making arrests where necessary. We will also be gathering intelligence about known offenders and the venues they are using to sell on stolen goods and who buys them," said Anderson.
"We are extremely confident that this software will make a difference both in reducing theft of laptops and making people who own one feel safer," he added.
Absolute Software said that, even if a thief tries to wipe the system, the application self heals and allows the tracking process to continue. It is loaded on the hard drive of a computer, while support for the ComputraceOne agent is embedded in the Bios. If the hard drive is reformatted or replaced, the ComputraceOne agent support in the Bios rebuilds the necessary application files on the hard drive as required by the customer.
Other police forces, including West Midlands Police, have used the software and have been able to return several laptops.
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