ReviewSaurus – Technology Rocks!

Being part of communities is really helpful as it lets you know that what kind of concerns people are having. I’m part of Cnet’s community (although, I’m not an active member there but I’m trying to be one) and this week’s question from another member provoked me to write something about it and share some of my thoughts about that question. So here’s the question and here’s what I think about the situation :

My wife and I had two laptops stolen from our room in an upscale hotel in Norfolk, Virginia last Saturday night. My question is somewhat open-ended. Is a concern justified for identity theft from the info available on the machine? Having owned the laptops for 1 to 2 years and using them as the primary home/travel computer, it is safe to say that everything was on the hard drive. Not only the 20GB of pictures, nor the finance stuff, or the research database, or all the cookies, etc.; even the money for the cost of the computers is poof–gone. What is the concern that the community would have for such a loss: identity theft, system hijacking, sleepless nights, having to buy new ones, and so on. In the future, in case of another loss, what are some solid security measures I can use to prevent someone from obtaining what I have on my laptops?

First of all, I’m sorry for Dave’s loss of laptop (the member who posted the question) and I’m sorry to say that your concern is just right and equally terrifying too. However, what has happened has happened and can’t be changed. Let us look at the concerning factors first and lets find out more about them and then we’ll try to figure out possible solutions, in case something like that happens :

The concerning factors :

1. Identity theft is definitely the biggest concern over here. The person can easily portray himself as you and can create problems for you in future. Imagine that he can e-mail all sort of stupid things to your contacts and in turn harming you on a personal scale. He may make use of your identity to commit various crimes, like taking loan on your name, doing transaction on the internet using your credit card information. It all depends on the kind of information you’ve kept on the laptop’s hard hard drive, if at all you’ve saved your social security number or any document which can reveal all your information.

Identity theft mostly covers the concerning factors, the ways through which one can use your computer to steal your identity are :

1. Information stored on cookies. (already mentioned by Dave)
2. Browsing habits.
3. Emails – Just in case if you use some email client like Outlook or Thunderbird.
4. Stored passwords.
5. Downloaded bank statements or credit card statements.
6. Your finance managing software.

2. Financial loss is also possible as you may have saved password of your bank account login or kept information about other financial stuff. I think, I don’t have to further say anything on this one, as it is pretty much clear to everyone that how you can get in trouble with this thing.

The solid measures to keep these factors away in case something like this happens :

To be honest there is no guaranteed way of being safe from such a loss. However, we can always take precautions to avoid it to a certain level. Few things which we can always try are :

1. Tie down the laptop physically : There are various locks available which will help you in tying the laptop so that no one can just pick it up and go away. Of course if some thief has got ample amount of time and the equipments then they can cut the cables and take it. But, still it is a better option than leaving the laptop open. A simple search on ebay got a good list of such cables.

2. Make use of Internet Security packages : Make use of various internet security packages which include Firewalls, anti-virus and Identity protection features. Don’t just rely on these security packages, you’ll need to be careful yourself too. Don’t just keep the financial information ready for everyone to look at, make use of encryption softwares (I’ll suggest TrueCrypt here) and keep them encrypted even though its your personal laptop.

3. Apply password to your user profiles : That’s the basic thing you can do. Although, that won’t save you but still, there is no harm in applying the password, just in case thief isn’t tech savvy then you are probably safe by just applying the password.

4. Back up the data regularly : Once the laptop is stolen, the data is gone. However, we can always make backup of important stuff so as not to lose everything forever.

5. Using tracing softwares : If you really want your laptop back then you may make use of various tracing softwares which will give you the location of the computer when they’ll be connected to the internet. They are hidden software, so most likely thief will not be able to find out about it. zTrace Gold is one such software which traces the stolen laptops and helps in recovering the data too.

I hope this article will help you in future and that you’ll be more cautious from now on about the sensitive information stored on your personal computer or laptop. If you liked the article, then please subscribe for the newsletter or for the RSS feeds. If you have any question on which you need some help then feel free to ask me the question and I’ll try my level best to give you the solution.

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