Phone home gadgets for cameras and laptop theft security
Alison DeLauzon thought the snapshots and home videos of her infant son were gone for good when she lost her digital camera while on vacation in Florida. But her camera "phoned home." Equipped with a special memory card with wireless Internet capability, her camera had not only automatically sent her holiday pictures to her computer, but had even uploaded photos of the thieves who swiped her equipment bag after she accidentally left it behind at a restaurant.
"I opened up the Eye-Fi manager on the computer and, lo and behold, there are the guys that stole our cameras," said DeLauzon, a native of New York's Long Island suburb. "Not only is it the guy who stole our camera ... but the guy took a picture of (his accomplice) holding our other camera."
DeLauzon had received Eye-Fi, a 2GB SD memory card that fits into millions of digital cameras, as a holiday gift with her Canon camera. Priced around $100, the card automatically uploads pictures to a home computer or online photosharing service as soon as the user is linked to a familiar wireless network.
Luckily, the culprits passed by an unsecured network, its factory-installed setting matched that of DeLauzon's home system, and the Eye-Fi automatically shipped the photos: first baby pictures, then the snap-happy scoundrels.
Her experience reflects the rise of technology that empowers everyday gadgets to protect themselves or the priceless personal data - from family phone numbers to business budgets -- that consumers keep on portable electronics devices.
Macs email videos to victims
Cameras are perhaps the most common home-phoning gadget used to thwart criminals. But while passive
systems have helped reunite gadgets with owners, more aggressive measures can be employed to protect everything from laptops to iPods and BlackBerrys.
GadgetTrak, of Beaverton, Oregon, sells software that can be loaded onto any of those devices. If a BlackBerry falls into the wrong hands, the software takes information from the new user's SIM data card and e-mails it to the rightful owner.
With an Apple Mac computer, the software instructs the built-in camera to video the thief and sends that to the owner, with information about nearby wireless networks. Some 20,000 GadgetTrack licenses have been purchased in about one year -- including 10,000 from storage company Seagate.
"The reason we have been so successful is that people are not expecting this kind of software to be installed," said Ken Westin, the company's founder. "No security solution is 100%, there are always going to be work-arounds. But your average thief is (hopefully) not going to be a computer expert."
Source: http://uk.reuters.com/
Webs: http://www.eye.fi/
:htpp://www.gadgettrak.com