GPS Tracking To Protect Against Identity Theft

Yeah, that’s what I though too when I first saw the headline, but stay with me, it does make sense:

This month the U.S. Federal Trade Commission reported that identity theft complaints comprised 36 percent of all those filed with the agency in 2006. Pointing out that laptop thefts often lead to concerns over identity theft, Robert Siciliano, a widely televised and quoted personal security and identity theft expert, encouraged consumers to equip their mobile computing devices with security technology, such as GPS tracking, that thwarts identity thieves…

In April of 2006, a ConsumerAffairs.com article titled “Little Lap tops, Big Problems” linked the theft of laptop computers to the theft of identities. Earlier this month, InfoWorld and others reported that last year grievances related to identity theft continued to constitute more than 35 percent of the total volume of complaints filed with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
Symantec has estimated that a laptop computer is stolen every 53 seconds, with just 3 percent of these ever being recovered. Research from Gartner Group has shown that the cost of laptop computer theft can exceed $6,000 for even just one machine, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has reported that losses due to laptop theft totaled more than $6.7 million dollars in 2005; on Feb. 13, in fact, The Washington Post reported that the FBI itself lost 160 laptop computers—at least 10 that stored sensitive information—between February 2002 and September 2005…. Telematics Journal Identity Theft Article here:

I’ve written about using GPS to track stolen laptops before.  MyLaptopGPS (mentioned in the article above) and Apple’s plan to include GPS in the next MAC OS version.  It doesn’t matter if you see one of these solutions as a good fit or if you select a different solution, you need to select a solution, period.

I originally got interested in writing about MyLapTopGPS because they really don’t seem to use the GPS in anyway … but after I saw how clever their solution and how much bang they give for the buck I figured I’d just let them go ahead with their clever, if slightly inaccurate marketing.  Less “geek speak”, more protection I say.

Laptops go missing all the time and letting one out into the wild without protection is just brainless.  If you have other’s sensitive data on it, it might even be critical.

Do something about it now, you have been warned,