Symmetric Engineering Group

By ERIC A. TAUB

There are a large number of antitheft software applications designed to protect laptops, smartphones and now, iPads. When your device is stolen, the application, which runs in the background when possible, does things like report its location, snap a picture with the device’s internal camera, display a message and lock the machine.

Recently, I took a look at GadgetTrak, a company that offers “advanced” antitheft software for Macs, PCs and smartphones. GadgetTrak distinguishes itself from its competition as a business that provides an antitheft “ecosystem,” offering customers the ability to track all devices, even those that don’t connect to the Internet. That last part is a bit of a stretch; the company will give you physical metal ID tags to attach to your printer, on the theory that if your laptop is swiped, your printer will be taken as well.

Install the GadgetTrak software on your PC, and then set up e-mail address notifications. If someone takes your laptop, you go to GadgetTrak’s Web site and turn on security protection. Then, the next time the laptop is used, the built-in Web cam takes a picture of the thief, automatically posts it to your Flickr account and sends you an e-mail alert. Using GPS service from Skyhook Wireless, the company says it can pinpoint your stolen device to within 10 to 20 meters of its location.

According to the company, the location information and photos will help police identify a suspect who may already be on their radar.

GadgetTrak, which says it has a customer base in the “five figures,” claims that with just one or two exceptions, 100 percent of devices protected by its software have been recovered. Assuming that statement’s accuracy, some of those products may have been recovered regardless of the software’s presence, or some may have simply been misplaced by its owners and later found.

On my MacBook, the software worked as promised. But I was never able to configure the product to send me an alert e-mail, even with the help of the company’s product manager. The photos of the purported thief (me) showed up on my Flickr account a few minutes after I took my laptop, but the location of the computer  was not that accurate. It showed me to be on a nearby street that cannot be directly reached by mine.

The company said the location accuracy is better in big cities; I am in a suburb, and presumably most thefts occur in more populated areas.

Photographs are taken at 30-minute intervals and when someone initially logs into a user account; the interval cannot be modified. But when I tried to activate the software at a Starbucks using the store’s AT&T Wi-Fi, GadgetTrak failed to send a picture, even though the laptop’s camera light went on after access was authorized.

A company spokesman said that even if the picture was not sent, it was stored. And that is true. When I opened the laptop the next day at home, the picture was sent to Flickr. But the location information for Starbucks was not sent; instead, it sent my home location, which I guess would be O.K. if a real thief had the laptop.

But I took my laptop back to Starbucks another day. This time, the Gadgettrak software did upload a picture of me to my Flickr account; also, it very accurately pinpointed my location, right down to the correct address.

Will GadgetTrak work for you? It will cost you $24.95 per year for one laptop license  to find out.

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