"BlackBerrys are built for business and have features built in, but they're increasingly being pushed aside by employees who want to use Androids and iPhones. For them the greater value is in the data and not the device itself. Absolute settled the case for an undisclosed amount before it could go to a jury, leaving no clear precedent for how courts will react to these cases in the future.īusinesses regard device theft quite differently than schools and consumers do. (Its $60 price might have been one clue.) She sued Absolute for its technicians' violation of her privacy. When police went to her home to seize the laptop they called her stupid and told her she "should have known better than to do that kind of stuff on the webcam." Clements-Jeffrey claimed she didn't know the laptop was stolen. The technician handed the salacious snaps to the cops. His inspection of her activity turned up a bunch of nude photos she'd been exchanging with her long-distance boyfriend. When an Ohio school district reported a student's laptop missing in 2008, an Absolute technician tracked it down to the home of Susan Clements-Jeffrey, who turned out to be a teacher in a different district. The technicians convey whatever data they can get to the police.īut even the professionals sometimes get into trouble. Only Absolute technicians are granted access to the camera and activity logs. Customers of those services must first file police reports before the surveillance capabilities can be activated. It has always kept stricter privacy safeguards on its two main services:įor Laptops and Computrace. "That's best left in the hands of professionals," said Stephen Midgley, Absolute's head of marketing. In response Absolute changed one of its services so that customers cannot activate webcams remotely. The district paid $610,000 to settle the lawsuit. School technicians had activated and taken pictures of a boy using his own webcam after the school mistakenly thought the laptop had been stolen. In 2010 parents of a Pennsylvania high schooler sued Lower Merion School District for "spying" on their son using Absolute surveillance software. If tracking services are not used carefully and within the bounds of privacy laws, legitimate owners and security professionals can get into legal gray areas, the repercussions of which could be far more expensive than a replacement iPhone. But to society, the power to track, intercept and share the contents of a mobile device has ripple effects that are not always so good. To the individual, the power to track or remotely control a laptop or phone seems like a good thing. The company claims more than 5 million customers and says it recovers more than 50 laptops every week. It has deals with companies such asĪnd HP to embed its tracking agent into their computers' boot-up software, where it is more difficult for a thief to remove than from the hard drive. #DOES ABSOLUTE LOJACK FOR LAPTOPS TAKE PHOTOS OF CRIMINALS SOFTWARE#The biggest player in laptop recovery is Absolute Software of Vancouver, B.C. Says Chief Executive Ken Westin, "This will have an impact on whether people steal or not." GadgetTrak, a small startup in Portland, Ore., has 150,000 customers paying $20 a year for its service. Paid services offer more extensive remote access, including the ability to turn on a phone, operate its camera, pull up a virtual copy of its home screen and monitor activity on the device. When a small plane disappeared off the coast of Chile in September, relatives of one of the 17 crash victims helped locate the plane by signing into the deceased passenger's Find My iPhone account and giving investigators its last GPS position. This revenue number includes antivirus, antimalware and network-security software.įree mobile security apps abound, such as Where's My Droid or Find My iPhone to locate your smartphone and programs to back up and restore data such as The business of keeping mobile devices secure was a $676 million industry in 2010 globally, and Global Industry Analysts projects it will be $5.8 billion by 2015. (Most theft-prone: LAX.) An industry has grown up to thwart the rampant theft. airports, according to a 2008 Ponemon Institute study. A laptop is stolen every minute across all U.S. The 19-year-old suspect was later indicted for felony theft.Įlectronics theft is the crime equivalent of white noise, going on around us all the time. The cops were able to pinpoint the right apartment unit after showing residents photos of the culprit from his purloined phone. The program can also turn on a phonecam remotely and start taking pictures. Had been installing on its floor models a software program called GadgetTrak that locates a phone or laptop using its GPS chip and Wi-Fi positioning.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |