GadgetTrak tracks stolen laptops, phones without breaking the bank

With the proliferation of mobile computing devices, computer security has become more important than ever before. What is more valuable, your laptop or the information that is on it? It may not be obvious, but your data is more important than the device itself.

Protection on the go
With the proliferation of mobile devices has come the proliferation of ways to hack them. Hacking is a loosely defined term that can have both negative or positive connotations; here, we're talking about the bad stuff. Hackers are capable of using various methods to bypass passwords on many (if not all) mobile devices. This opens up your data to their perusal, which could result in credit card fraud — or even worse, identity theft.

GadgetTrak is among a host of services that provide protection for your mobile data on the go by downloading a small piece of software onto the mobile device in question — in this case, laptops. Some programs of this type have to run all the time. Some mobile devices, such as Apple's line of iDevices, have built-in mobile tracking features that can be turned on with Apple's proprietary MobileMe service.

How it works
With GadgetTrak, the installation process is simple. Download the software and run through the installation prompts. It's pretty standard stuff these days. From that point on, however, GadgetTrak offers a very unique experience. Let's take a look at some of the features of the laptop version of this product.

When you register, the software collects various pieces of identification about your device. The two most important pieces of information gathered are the serial number and MAC address of your device. The MAC address is a unique identifier that is tied directly to your wifi hardware. While this can be swapped out by a thief, there usually is no incentive to do so on a stolen item. The serial number, however, is totally unique to the device and cannot be altered.

Once you've registered the product, you can do a test run to make sure the software is working correctly and you are able to track your device. The information gathered in a tracking run include the location (shown using Google Maps integration in the website's customer area), the IP address where the device is connected to the internet, the date and time of the tracking hit, and the latitude and longitude.

One of the most unique aspects of GadgetTrak's laptop product is the use of your device's built-in webcam. The tracking software can actually capture an image of the thief and send it back to you. All information collected during a tracking activation is sent directly to you from GadgetTrak. No one else has access to the information. That's a nice plus, as well.

Just imagine being able to give a picture of the thief to local authorities when you report your laptop theft. It would make laptop recovery much easier than ever before.

Our experience
After being given an activation code to review the product, we took our laptop out into the field for an actual test of the tracking service. Here are our results.

First, activating the tracking was a breeze. Simply log into the GadgetTrak website, and all of your registered devices will be listed there. Click on the device you want and activate tracking. This sends out a signal to the laptop, which is running GadgetTrak in the background, unbeknownst to your thief.

If your stolen device is currently online when you activate tracking, feedback comes in almost instantaneously via email. If your device is not turned on, the next time the thief connects to the internet, the software sends out an update to the GadgetTrak service with the tracking information. When you log in to check the information stored on the GadgetTrak servers, it's all nicely plotted out on a Google Map with geographical location of hits, etc.

The only problem we encountered during our test was with the accuracy of the wifi location tracking. When we tried it at home, the tracking was unable to narrow down our location to anything closer than the city in which we were located. That was a bit disappointing, especially given the description of wifi tracking on GadgetTrak's website:

Using Wi-Fi positioning technology, GadgetTrak can pinpoint your laptop's location, usually within a few meters!

However, in the company's defense, the website also indicates that it uses only wifi location so that GPS isn't needed. The reason for this is because GPS signals can be blocked inside of buildings, while wifi is generally available inside of many businesses and home building environments. Coverage maps available on the site show that most major urban areas in North America, Asia, and Europe are covered.

A value worth investigating
The headline of this article mentioned not breaking your bank; there's a reason for that. The premiere tracking product currently available from another vendor is MobileMe from Apple. While Apple charges $99 a year for its service, GadgetTrak's laptop service is available for both Mac and Windows systems for only $34.99 a year with a 30-day free trial. With the trial available, there's no reason not to check it out to see what you think. If you've only got one laptop to protect, the price is definitely a no-brainer.

Family plans are available covering up to 5 laptops for $99.95 a year.

We're giving this app 3.5 out of 5 stars. The trial is a plus, but the coverage maps are pretty limited overall. If you live in an urban area, this could be just the ticket. Rural customers will probably want to take a pass on this one until more coverage becomes available.

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