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How to Get Your Lost Computer back with Prey
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 05:00 AM PDT
A former FBI and NASA employee lost his Macbook Pro during recent riots in London. The laptop was stolen from his apartment. He couldn’t hope that the thief will return the laptop anytime soon. That’s why he installed a small tracking software on his computer which later helped him track down the thief. With the help of London Metropolitan Police, a few days later his Macbook Pro was recovered. How was it possible?
No, it’s not because he had connections to FBI. It’s the lightweight and free tracking software he installed on his computer that did the job. He was able to see the face of the thief. He was also able to see what that guy was doing on his computer. He grabbed the ID when the thief was logging in to Facebook. That’s how he managed to get his laptop back.
Let’s learn how you too can make sure you have a chance to track down your laptop if it ever gets stolen.
Prey
Prey is a free and open source anti-theft software solution for Mac, PC, Linux and Android. Once you install it on your device, it pulls all the technical data (no personal data is collected) and saves it to your account on Prey. Later, when your laptop or handset goes missing, you only need to mark the appropriate device as missing from Prey’s website.
After that, Prey will remotely wake itself up on your device and keep sending you “reports”. These reports can be customized. You can set the delay between two reports, what to send and many more. Primarily, they include current location if that device has a GPS. Prety can also takes pictures with the webcam or screenshots of whatever the person is browsing.
Installing Prey
As said above, Prey can be installed on your laptop and desktop on Windows, Linux (Ubuntu) and Mac OS. It also has a mobile version for smartphones running Android. In this post, we’ll show you how to install Prey on a Windows machine considering that it’s the most popular operating system on the planet.
First of all, head over to Prey Project’s download page
and download your edition of Prey on your computer. Once the installer has been downloaded, run it to install. You may need to create an account as a first user. Make sure you provide your current and valid email address, because that’s where the emails containing reports will be sent to.
You can now set up a reporting method, configure prey settings or simply change the preference for executions. It’s recommended that you first set up a reporting method.
In order to set up a reporting method, select Prey + Control Panel as it’s the easiest to work with.
In the settings window, you will find options to enable guest accounts and wi-fi autoconnect. Guest Account is important, because if the thief can’t log in to your machine, prey is completely unable to pull up any information about you. It’s also important to turn wi-fi autoconnect on, because without Internet, Prey will not be able to send you reports.
You also need to configure Prey execution options. Here, you will have to set whether Prey will run as a Windows service or run at user-level. I prefer the first option, because it enables Prey to work more efficiently. You can also set the frequency of reports.
That means, Prey will not be pulling up reports for as long as the computer is running. If you set frequency to 15 minutes, Prey will “wake up” every 15 minutes and take a picture using webcam, take a screenshot and send them to your Prey account.
Just so you know, these settings can be overwritten through your account on the Prey website, so you can always change them without having to actually log in to your device.
Prey is free for up to 3 devices. If you want it for your business with lots of additional features, you can upgrade to their pro option.
Conclusion
Prey is a superb tracking software. It works so silently that the thief will never understand that his information is being sent. I think everyone should install Prey on their laptop and Android device just to “hope” that they will get their devices back in case they get stolen.
(By) Aminul Islam Sajib is a technology reporter and passionate blogger from Bangladesh. More about him on his personal blog
