Don’t steal my laptop!

I like to call lap­tops “highly portable eas­ily dam­aged thief attrac­tion devices”. I have a sim­ple rule for pur­chas­ing any elec­tronic device: mul­ti­ply the price times two, because no mat­ter how care­ful you are, no mat­ter how much cush­ion­ing your bag or case has, you’re prob­a­bly going to lose or break that device at the worst pos­si­ble time. Just assume you’ll have to replace the device the next day.

I’m not a pes­simist, and who said I was para­noid? I’m a real­ist. I started using com­put­ers in the late 1970s, and I’ve seen theft, dam­age, and other show­stop­pers that can grind users to a screech­ing halt.

In this post, I’ll focus on how to reduce the finan­cial mis­ery if your lap­top oi stolen. Some of these tips also apply to other small elec­tronic devices, like cell phones, iPods, and dig­i­tal cameras.

If you’re search­ing for the busi­ness model here, it’s based upon risk and fear. It’s the same model that sells insur­ance. Most com­pa­nies try to min­i­mize finan­cial and legal risk. Many users are afraid of what might hap­pen if they lost con­trol of the data on the computer.

There’s an old tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial for auto­mo­bile air fil­ters. A mechanic would describe the expen­sive repairs that his customer’s car required, and how the dam­age could have been pre­vented if the cus­tomer had replaced the engine’s rel­a­tively inex­pen­sive air fil­ter on a reg­u­lar basis.

The tagline was “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.”

Let me repeat: if you own a lap­top com­puter, you should assume that it will be stolen or dropped at some point. Accord­ing to Safeware’s esti­mate of 2002 reports, 72% of lap­top com­puter losses are the result of acci­dents. Only 15% are from theft.

Plan to spend some extra money buy­ing one or all of the fol­low­ing items:

1. Insur­ance≈
2. Secu­rity software
3. Secu­rity hardware
4. A cush­ioned bag or case
5. War­ranty or ser­vice plan

Lap­top com­put­ers tend to have a much shorter ser­vice life than desk­top com­put­ers, because of these issues and the inher­ent dif­fi­cul­ties of upgrad­ing a highly inte­grated ele­cronic device.

At the very least, record the ser­ial and model num­bers of your device, and store them in a safe place at home. Most homeowner’s and renter’s insur­ance poli­cies will allow cus­tomers to add com­put­ers and portable elec­tron­ics, although some­times there’s an addi­tional pre­mium and a deductible. Some busi­ness insur­ers offer sim­i­lar cov­er­age for cor­po­rate equipment.

Safe­ware is one of sev­eral com­pa­nies that offer insur­ance for portable com­put­ers and elec­tronic devices. It can be expen­sive, but if you or your busi­ness depend on these devices and can­not afford to replace them out of pocket, it’s a rea­son­able option.

How do you find your lap­top if it’s missing?

This arti­cle from Cre­ativeTechs dis­cusses three dif­fer­ent theft recov­ery prod­ucts designed for lap­tops. Two of the ser­vices, Lojack and Phone­Home, are avail­able for Win­dows and Mac com­put­ers. Phone­Home sends an e-mail mes­sage to a pre­set account, while LoJack con­tacts a server.

One of the Mac pack­ages, Orbicule Under­cover, will take pic­tures with the Mac’s biult in iSight cam­era. Orbicule has a stu­dent ver­sion avail­able for US$25 for today only. The reg­u­lar verr­sion is only US$29.

Of course, you have to pur­chase, install and acti­vate the soft­ware in advance. If you wait until the lap­top is miss­ing, it’s too late to do much about it.

All three of these pack­ages are use­less if the thief doesn’t con­nect the lap­top to the Inter­net. There is a large chop-shop mar­ket for RAM, hard dri­ves, dis­play screens, and other com­puter parts.

So the secu­rity soft­ware is nice, but phys­i­cal secu­rity is essen­tial. Most thefts are crimes of con­ve­nience, so any­thing that you can do to slow a thief’s progress will make you a less invit­ing target.

I carry a Kens­ing­ton MicroSaver com­bi­na­tion lock with my lap­top. These locks are ava­iable in keyed edi­tions, but I pre­fer the com­bi­na­tion model. I’m afraid I’ll lose my keys.

Almost every lap­top com­puter includes a Kens­ing­ton secu­rity slot, as described at http://www.us.kensington.com/html/1356.html. I’ve seen many LCD mon­i­tors that have these slots on the back, too. The slot is a small rec­tan­gu­lar hole, usu­ally on the side or the back of the computer’s case.

The slot is often marked with a trade­marked logo that Kens­ing­ton allows man­u­fac­tur­ers to use free of charge. That’s a smart idea in itself.

Wrap the cable around an immov­able object, and clip the lock into the secu­u­rity slot.

A lock won’t pre­vent a thief from remov­ing your hard drive or RAM. Of course, a thief could carry a big pair of cable cut­ters and use that to clip the steel cable. It is pos­si­ble to rip the lock out of the Kens­ing­ton slot, but that will leave a gap­ing hole in the side of the com­puter, and the required force might dam­age the dis­play and hard drive. A good cable lock will make it incon­ve­nient, noisy and obvi­ous if a theif is steeal­ing your laptop.

I place Stuff­bak stick­ers on my portable devices. These self-adhesive stick­ers come in a vari­ety of sizes, and each has a unique ser­ial num­ber, along with a toll-free tele­phone num­ber and the Stuffbak.com URL. Just add the num­ber, along with a descrip­tion of your lap­top, iPod, ten­nis racket, or what­ever, tyo your Stuff­bak account. If some­one finds and returns the item to Stuffbak’s Col­orado office, they’ll receive $20 in Stuff­bak stick­ers. You can offer an addi­tional cash reward if you wish.

Be care­ful when you place these stick­ers on your device. They use a very strong adhe­sive. It is pos­si­ble to remove the sticker, but it takes some effort, and you might scratch the case. That’s part of the sticker’s design, of course.

Also, you should avoid plac­ing the stick­ers on a wear point, or over a hole or ridge. I try to use the small­est size Stuff­bak sticker that I can, although if space per­mits, I will break out the large for­mat stick­ers and use them.

Tagged as: crime, hardware, iPod, mobile, security