I am hoping for the functionality that HTC Sense provides for finding a lost phone.
Is it possible to have develop something to remotely control our
N900 device in case it is stollen.

I am sure this requires Nokia to do something in the firmware and not alone can be achieved via an installable app on the N900. But can this be built at the core of MAEMO and not be as an installable app.

Any suggestions?

smscon.............

I do not know the HTC Sence feature, but this app (SMScon) could provide similar features:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=60729

Disclaimer: Please beware that this is still in extras-devel, i.e. the application is not stable. Use at own risk

are you sure?

iamhere claimed that it can do it but there are strong suspicions about its functionality and habit to send stuff to some russian email address.

all you need is the app, all the apis are there waiting to be used....

iamhere did it, but what ossipena said is very much worth looking into.

SMSCon does it. It's experimental, but such is life.

And there's another guy who combined the lightphpd server "app" on the N900 with some PHP code to create a web-browser accessible link with which he can control his N900. And he was planning on making his codes accessible publically, so someone could probably package it as an installable app easily.

SMSCon can do this. But this runs as a daemon on N900 and so we can stop this?

So say if I remove SMSCon I won't be able to use the benefits of this application. Any one can unistall from N900 and change the SIM and do whatever with no SMSCon to track this.

So the request here is to include some functionality at the core of the device.( I mean the firmware / OS ).

I have 2 words for you:

which means it is next to impossible to do such thing you want.

Won't / Can't happen. Maemo is a distribution of Linux, there is no murky closed "core" of the device, it's simply a system comprising the kernel and applications running on top of that. Regardless of whether such a security application were distributed with the OS image (which Nokia will have no inclination to do) the result will still be an application which can be terminated/removed.

There are various ways of making doing so harder, but anything remotely effective would require a total rewrite of Maemo's (not-very-extensive) security policy to, for a start, provide some method of making root harder to obtain (which currently anyone with physical access to the device can get). Even if a hypothetical piece of software existed that you couldn't shut off, you could still tivially stop it actually communicating with the outside world via iptables. Alternatively, just disable the device's wlan and gps drivers - Then, regardless of GSM data capability, the device won't (and can't) know where it is.

Essentially what it boils down to is that making the application unstoppable when in the hands of a thief is flat out not possible, it's simply down to degrees of difficulty (how knowledgable the thief is about the device and how much time they want to invest in disabling any tracking capability it contains), for which under practically any use case, smscon or similar is fine.

One simple request to solve my concern. Can we have a lock to installing / unistalling applications (password protect).

This will give me what I am looking for and I guess the good work of SMSCon can be used here.

Does upgrading firmware also remove SMSCon from the device. If so this limits its use till the device firmware is not changed.

I am sure that losing a device might be common, but losing it to some one wise enough to hack it is a less probable. But I want to lessen the chances of everything to make sure that I get my N900 if an ever if it is lost or stolen.

I love my phone and I am being very cautious to not lose it. I ordered it during the preorder days and didn't even get the rebate that Nokia announced .
.

How does that functionality on HTC sense work?

I just googled it and this post was the first result.