Stolen laptops will photograph the thief

A company in the UK has claimed a patent for a new high-tech version of exploding dye packs that are placed in banks in bags of cash. This new patented software will photograph the laptop thief remove any sensitive files, and not only that, will give away its position.

The system has had exhaustive tests in the county of Yorkshire, which followed a spate of well-publicised thefts of government laptops from cars or homes of government officials.

The company will charge a monthly fee of £10/$20 for a link to its main control centre, the staff at the centre can quickly take action if the laptop is switched on outside of a designated area, this can be outside of a government building or even a small area such as a specific desk.

If the computer is removed from a specified area, the computer will automatically connect to the Internet when it is switched on, and then commence to take multiple photographs of its surroundings and user, at the same time sending out a signal specifying its exact location to the company’s control centre.

Virtuity is the company behind the software and its spokesman Dean Bates said: “We guarantee to monitor the state and whereabouts of any laptop’s electronic ‘heartbeat’, and to trigger the destruction of any files in the case of unauthorised, or apparently unauthorised, use,” and that “There are millions of laptops out there containing valuable data. Most of them are not stolen because of that, but it’s an obvious attraction if the thief wants to sell the computer on to more serious criminals.”

The company claims that its BackStopp system cannot be detected by thieves, even when sending out data to the control centre or removing files, the latest laptops which use mobile phones technology known as Global System for Mobile communications, GSM, would be used to activate software even if the laptop only moved a few feet from its set position.

In January this year, the government said that in the Ministry of Defence alone 69 laptops and even 7 PC’s went missing from their offices over the last year.

There will be a domestic version of the system, which will allow for data recovery with a password protected server, for members of the public who break their own restrictions and leave authorise zones.

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