I was reading about the amount of laptops that go missing worldwide in airports and you’d be amazed – 900 per week for Heathrown alone! Carmel asked a question on the subject today too so If you loose a laptop or have it robbed, heres a bit of advice.
First off, you need to employ some preventative measures to ensure against data loss whether the laptop itself goes missing or simply dies. I’ve written some articles in the PC Backup Solutions category which are equally relevant to laptops as well as desktops.
Secondly, you need to password proptect the laptop to avoid access to sensitive data. To do this under windows XP go to ‘Start – Control Panel – User Accounts’ click on the name of your main administrator account and choose ‘Create a password’. If there are any other accounts on the pc they should also be password protected and the account types should be changed to ‘Limited’. You should also turn off the ‘Guest’ account.
If the robbers are PC savvy they can get around this password limitation easy enough so you might need to look at some kind of remote security option which traces the whereabouts of the laptop when its stolen and has the ability to freeze the computer on command, blocking all access. www.absolute.com offers these kinds of services.
Another option is to use LogMeIn Remote Access software to connect to your laptop, if the ‘new owners’ go online with it, and delete data.
You should also consider a physical security lock that chains your pc to something immovable!
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