Originally Posted by Naranek

I think it would be better to have the device remain operational. If it locks up, the thief would probably flash it or throw it away. As long as it is functioning, the thief might use it himself or sell it to someone, so it'll keep popping up in the network and sending location data. I'm fairly confident the authorities would in fact act on this if I had a good trace of the device. After all, you don't know how much other stolen things you'd find from the perpetrator.

Originally Posted by allnameswereout

Sorry, I don't think you're being realistic here.

How are you going to phone home if the thief or user doesn't have an Internet connection? He might have some WiFi and BT passwords but those aren't neccesary useful unless he/she lives near your WiFi APs, or also got your phone.

A car gets stolen from West Europe and 12 hours later its already out of Europe. The car at whole, or nowadays: in parts. Small electronical devices like this get stolen and resold quickly. The person who ends up with it will be a poor smuck who can't afford it new. He/she bought it 2nd hand, knowing or not it was stolen. The higher the difference between regular 2nd hand and the price its being sold, the higher the chance is its a stolen device.

A script like this is a great idea, but IMO it is part of a bigger plan. Its better to prevent a device like this to be stolen. Don't walk around with it in the big city, like a tourist looking at his/her uberexpensive GPS device, this attracts certain people. For example this weekend I've been in Amsterdam and I usually kept my NIT in my moneybelt. I have 2 good locks for my bicycle which is the minimum, I lock my bicycle always properly (2 locks, in a way pissing off the burglar as much as possible to slow him/her off), and my bicycle looks old. Also, if you expect a device to be stolen, use encrypted partitions like TrueCrypt or LUKS. Activate these during boot, and disable swap (or use encrypted swap).

There are, basically, stupid thieves and smart thieves. The stupid ones are already jailed. The smarter ones are still floating around. You can protect yourself from the stupid ones, but the smarter ones is more difficult. Therefore, while I'm not saying the feature is useless, I highly doubt the thief would use the device. The difference between a bike and a device like this is that the thief cannot know what the device is, and what its features are. He'd probably think its a weird phone (because its a Nokia). This'd also be one of the reasons the first thing he'll do is putting the thing off and getting the SIM the hell outa there. Because he or she knows about tracking via 2G cell tower. I think the first the he does is putting it off, and then figuring out how much they go 2nd hand, going a bit under the normal price but not too much so it doesn't look sneaky, or if his customer base knows its stolen he gives it for a friend price (say 50 EUR).

And, I know for sure cops don't give a SHlT about a stolen bike or mobile phone. They don't have the manpower for this, and it doesn't earn them any cash either. They write it down in their database, but nothing will get done except maybe later for profiling if the thief strikes again. The chances these people get caught are, in my country very low. IIRC less than 20%. Heck, they have a hard time jailing people dealing harddrugs while they always do it in the same neighborhood, even same places approx too.

There is another program linked to here on ITT about a message at boot up which shows whatever text you prefer like an e-mail message. Its more effective against honest finders.

Just some viewpoints.. cheers

Addendum: When setting up a defense barrier it is important to first define who and what you're trying to protect yourself from, and then implement one or more ways against this/these attack vector(s).

When I walk with my NIT I also put my left hand under it, using the thing it should stand on around my left hand with my fingers around the device on the right top. Then finger or stylus from the right hand. This way it is also harder to accidentally drop the device.

That said, I will probably use VPN + FTP + a write only directory to which the IP and current GPS data will be send to, but I would do this via crontab, and only set this on when I'd go to a risky area to save CPU cycles. Maybe it'd be useful to have some kind of authentication every X days, verifying the user is still authentic. If not, it goes into phone home mode. I'm pretty sure some proprietary software works like that

Originally Posted by lcuk

Trying to do something quick and simple to at least give you a chance of getting your machine located and back to you is better than doing nothing at all.

We had a short discussion on irc about this thread and I went hunting for a google maps api which should keep historical tracks of your device if its required.

Once you get the functionality to tell the server where your device is (whether once per session or every few minutes) then many additional data processing options can be used

http://conversationswithmyself.com/m...apTracker.html

It would be really good to add this server side functionality into maemo.org * and have the client software pre-configured to go to your account there.

Obviously all private unless specified and can be reconfigured to any server.


*mainly because not everyone has their own cputime and webspace available.

Originally Posted by Betty Woo

OK, I don't get it.

This whole thing seems to be based entirely on the supposition that the N8xx is stolen as opposed to just being lost (and eventually found) - a far more likely scenario, non?

I'm not sure why you wouldn't just want to replace the start-up splash screen with your name and contact (email) info and a short message asking for the 'return of the unit if this screen appears since you would remove it it you'd sold or given it away'.

Or have the screen splash, after, say, 40 minutes automatically after start-up to avoid a thief first playing with the N8xx a bit before trying to pawn it off so someone who would see it would at least *know* it is either missing/stolen?

I mean, I don't see why you can think a thief is going to spend much time with this unit. S/He might as well get rid of it quickly as possible since anyone who actually *knows* anything about these Nokia units will know that the tablet is missing the recharger and the usb cord. And if the thief tries to pawn it off to some idiot who *doesn't* know what the hell s/he's getting, the thief would have to have as full a battery as possible to razzle-dazzle a potential buyer.

At that point, it really is up to the person in possession of the unit whether to go through the process to get it back to you but at least that person *knows* the unit has been lost/stolen as opposed to your method which seems to endlessly track the unit with no way to either inform the new 'owner' or give the new 'owner' a chance to get the unit back to you.

Alternatively, if I was so concerned about theft, I'd just etch an email address on the back plastic and if it does go missing, at least you can post signs up or tell local internet forums to look out for it.

I dunno. I've worked in tourism in the past and I've been in a job position where a lot of incredibly interesting things that are genuinely lost come across my desk and the first thing I try to do before I give it to the Lost & Found Department is to find an obvious method the owner has left for me to contact them and, um, your method is not obvious.

In fact, in iTunes, my iPod is actually named a specific email address and the contact information on it is also linked to an email address (if I'm traveling in Europe, I can't reasonably expect someone to phone me back in North America just to tell me they've found my iPod and, well, I'd still be traveling in Europe, anyway. Email is a much quicker, much freer method of contact).

However, you give an N8xx with this thing on the unit to your girlfriend/boyfriend and I guess you can become a stalker? If you can track people with those iPod+Nike units, why not the Nokia N8xx's?

Originally Posted by dannemil

Many ways to solve the problem.