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A Kentucky man is charged with theft after stealing a laptop from the Kentucky Fair and Expo Center, all because he was checking Facebook on the stolen device equipped with GPS tracking capabilities.

The victim placed a call to police around 10pm on October 11^th stating that his laptop had been stolen.  Officers arrived to the Expo Center, and the victim stated he could be of some assistance: his laptop had a GPS tracking device for this very reason.  Not only could he discover where exactly the laptop was at any given time, he could also see whatever was open on the screen.

In this case, the victim could see that 47-year old Alton C. Guntzviller was logged onto his Facebook page, making the arrest a simple one.  The address came through leading police directly to Guntzviller, already knowing in advance that he was the suspect in question.  They also learned that Guntzviller was employed as a security guard at the Expo Center.

Police arrived to his Hillcross Drive home and found him outside on the front porch.  He provided his identification when asked, and immediately confessed to his crime early on during questioning, returning the laptop to police.

Article Written by Khristen Foss

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Greg Martin, a 29 year old London resident, is one of the many unfortunate victims of the London riots. After a night of holding up in his girlfriend’s residence in southwest London, due to rioting close to his home, he returned to find his West End apartment turned upside-down. He arrived to find the bars on his windows pried open. Inside he found drawers ransacked, money and small electronics missing, along with his MacBook Pro laptop. He was particularly concerned that his laptop was stolen, as it contained personal information, as well as sensitive work-related information from his job as an IT security consultant.

Fortunately, Martin had the foresight to install a tracking program, called Prey. It is an open-source application, produced by Fork, whose offices are located in Hong Kong and Santiago. Once the user realizes their device is missing, Prey can be activated through a web portal. As long as the stolen device has internet access, and Prey as been activated, the user will receive periodic updates on the GPS location of their stolen property.

It took Martin’s thief a while to get around the laptop’s password protection. He suspects Mac OSX installation software was used to create a new account on the computer. Once the laptop connected to the internet, Prey was activated, sending an alert with the GPS location of his laptop to Martin, who was in Luxembourg on business. “It was a really incredible feeling,” he said. “I nearly feel out of my chair. I see this guy staring back at me, and I have his address.”

He immediately upgraded his Prey account to receive more regular GPS location updates. The paid version allowed him to watch, as the 18-year-old thief browsed Muslim religious sites, shopped for cars and eventually logged in to Facebook. The thief’s identity was immediately revealed, including name and address, which turned out to be mere blocks away from where Martin lived. The information was turned in to police. “I almost gave them an entire dossier on the guy,” he explained. “They had no problems picking him up.” The teen was charged with handling stolen goods and is scheduled to appear in court within the week.

Article Written by Marisa O’Connor

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By Greg Bartlett

What item is valuable and easy to pilfer that would leave most college students and business people devastated? The answer is simple: their laptop.

College students depend on their laptops for everything. They keep in contact with others through social networking sites and email. They use the internet for research, and spend many hours writing papers and working on their projects. If their laptops were stolen, most college students would lose the entire semester’s worth of work and have to start over on all their projects. So why would they leave their most important possession unguarded?

Laptop theft can also be a problem in the workplace. Whether the laptops were handed out by the companies themselves or they belong to the workers, much would be lost if they went missing. It’s very simple to walk past an empty desk, quickly unplug a laptop, and walk off with it. So what can prevent this kind of thing from happening? How can you get your laptop back if it is stolen?

Laptop tracking can be fairly simple using a GPS tracker. If someone were to steal your laptop, you would be able to pinpoint the exact location of the laptop as soon as you discovered that it was missing. Just the knowledge that the company’s laptops were equipped with a GPS tracker would deter theft, because the would-be thief would understand just how easily he or she could be caught.

In college dorms, people come and go so much that it would be easy for someone to learn the schedules and routine habits of those around him. All a thief needs to know is that you always go to the Friday night basketball game and that your roommate likes to spend nights studying in the library. All of a sudden, your laptop is missing and you have thousands of suspects. But you remember the GPS tracker that you bought and you instantly locate and reclaim your laptop.

Tracking down something that is stolen has always been a very difficult thing to do, but with a GPS tracker it is very simple to find what has been lost. Protect your laptop and all the valuable information that you have stored on it by taking advantage of current technology that makes your belongings secure.

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