Re: Stolen Computer

From: Beamguy (nobody_at_home.com)
Date: 01/07/05 

Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 12:06:30 -0500

Many hardware components in a PC have unique identifying codes - some are
often provided to the internet. There was some noise a while back about unique
serial numbers in pentium processors that could be used to identify you. More
useful is likely the "Mac address" of your network card. It is a unique code
different for each and every networking card. If you don't know it for your
laptop there is a small chance that your ISP recorded it the last time you logged
into their network.

If you have wireless networking it likely also has a record of the mac address
of your wireless card.

If you know your mac address and the ISP of your "friend" you sometimes can
find the IP address of your pc through searching by "mac address". I have never
done this myself - but have been told it can be done.

"redbear" <redbear@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:DFDC0536-235E-4F42-AF77-6DCFB02B7153@microsoft.com...
>I know who has it I just can not prove it. Thanks for your help.
>
>
> "Tim Holman (MVP - Windows Security)" wrote:
>
>> http://www.pcphonehome.com
>>
>> Tracking the user down is fairly easy. You'll get the IP address from
>> pcphonehome, and you can trace this back to an ISP. You then take out a
>> court order on the ISP to supply you with the details of the person using
>> that IP at the time.
>> 90% of the time you'll find the laptop, but more often then not, the 'new'
>> end user has bought this laptop in 'good faith' from a street corner, so the
>> original culprit can rarely be caught, although you do get your laptop
>> back....
>> Better still, make sure your laptop doesn't get pinched in the first place,
>> that you have regular backups of important data, and if necessary, something
>> like www.deslock.com to ensure your entire hard drive is encrypted so no-one
>> can see your data..
>>
>> "redbear" <redbear@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:76CB5B67-FE77-4E8F-AA6D-02E1FB1D241E@microsoft.com...
>> >I came in on the end of a news segment that was talking about finding
>> >stolen
>> > computers. They said that if the person that stole the computer connects
>> > to
>> > the internet they can be tracked down and I would be able to get my
>> > computer
>> > back. Do you know anything about this?
>>
>>
>>

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