We are pleased to announce that GadgetTrak PhoneBAK for Sony Ericsson is now in final beta. If you are interested in participating in the final beta please contact us, those selected for the beta test will get a free copy of the GadgetTrak PhoneBak - SE Edition.

GadgetTrak was featured in Singapore’s The Straits Times today in quite a large spread.

GagetTrak will be at MacWorld this year! We will be joining our partner in crime (prevention) BAK2u.

Will you be attending too? Want to discuss partner opportunities? Shoot us an email and we will be sure to meet up with you. This year’s event looks huge, with the increasing popularity of Apple products, the launch of the iPhone there is sure to be some big announcements and news from this years event.

Not signed up yet? Register here for a $10 exhibit pass and 15% off select conference programs.

Yes a GadgetTrak iPhone and Touch solution is in the works. I think we found just the right guy to do the commerical for us when it is released:

my stolen ipod touch commercial from matthew k on Vimeo.

With Christmas fast approaching, a lot of people will be getting gadgets for Christmas. Many of these gadgets will be stolen. The recovery rate for GadgetTrak subscribers has been above 90% over the past few months. People ask how did you do it? I will run through two recent iPod recoveries.

Newmarket, Ontario Stolen iPod Recovery

In Nemarket, Ontario an iPod was stolen from one of our subscribers Geoff, who had installed the GadgetTrak USB software on a friends iPod, as he had an extra license. His friends iPod was stolen a few months later.

Geoff logged in and flagged the device as stolen as well as notified us directly. Reviewing the case, the iPod in question was stolen in a high school so we assumed that the thief was a fellow student in the school. After a short amount of time a connection was made with forensic data. With the information provided by the GadgetTrak agent software we were able to work with the school administrators to identify the student who had stolen the iPod, the iPod was recovered from the student and it matched the serial number of the iPod registered with us. The iPod was given back to the owner.

“Great news! We recovered the stolen ipod. The thief was confronted with the evidence, and sure enough, the serial numbers matched. We printed out the GadgetTrak report, and that was just about all the evidence they needed. Just wanted to thank you again for your great service! Apparently the principal, school administrators, advisers, and students are all looking into GadgetTrak after hearing our success story. “- Geoff

Dublin, Ohio Stolen iPod Nano Recovery

Another more recent recovery was in in Dublin, Ohio. A GadgetTrak subscriber Michele, had installed GadgetTrak USB on her step-daughters iPod Nano. On October 18th the iPod was stolen by a fellow student at her high school. The GadgetTrak sticker had been peeled off and the serial number of the iPod was even filed off, however the GadgetTrak USB software gave the thief away.

After talking with the Dublin, Ohio police department we learned that not only was our subscriber’s iPod Nano recovered , but also a large cache of other stolen property. Our subscriber was very pleased with our software and service:

“My stepdaughter got her iPod back today, she said the kid that took it plugged it in and that GadgetTrak saw it and worked with the school. That was AWESOME! You have one very happy teenage girl!” - Michele

GadgetTrak Verey was featured in today’s edition of El Norte, Northern Mexico’s leading newspaper. They wrote up a special article on laptop theft and mentions GadgetTrak Verey as a the best solution for Mac theft recovery.

¿Sabe dónde esta su Mac?
 
“Sabemos por experiencia propia lo encariñados que están con sus sistemas los propietarios de las Mac. Casi son como miembros de la familia”, dice el sitio del sistema de localización Gadgettrak.

Es por esto que crearon un sistema para la localización de macs “perdidas”, llamado Verey. El sistema aprovecha a la captura de video iSight en estas máquinas para tomar una foto del nuevo e ilegítimo propietario. La fotografía, junto con la dirección IP y varios otros datos pertinentes, le será enviada al propietario original en la primera oportunidad.
Más información en www.gadgettrak.com.

GadgetTrak is now available and in stock at The Mac Store retail outlets. GadgetTrak Verey Mac Anti-Theft software and GadgetTrak USB for iPods and other devices are now available just in time for Christmas. Now when consumers buy a new Mac, or iPod they can buy theft software at the same time to protect their investments.

Tech65 in Singapore did a great review of GadgetTrak with a quick walk through and even a simulated theft

GadgetTrak is available in Singapore through our partner BAK2u as well as the iShop retail store.

GadgetTrak was featured in response to a story on the rising occurance of GPS theft. Not only is GadgetTrak a great solution to GPS theft, but also iPods, cell phones, laptops and more.

According to a recent study UK business travellers lose up to 8,500 mobile devices at UK airports every year. The worst airports for mobile device lose were London airports where more than 400 laptops and 2,500 other mobile devices (mobile phones, iPods etc) are lost annually.

The laptops, mobile phones, mobile phones and USB sticks contain potentially sensitive information and pose security risks for businesses. This also makes airports a haven for thieves. In addition for the need to encrypt sensitive data it is important to have a means to recover the devices when they are stolen.

GadgetTrak Verey is the best anti-theft solution available for Mac computers. It is the only theft recovery solution that captures video of thieves, gathers network data and is compatible with Leopard.

GadgetTrak PhoneBak is the only theft recovery solution available for mobile phones that works with Windows Mobile, Symbian and soon to be announced Blackberrry and Sony Ericsson phones.

GadgetTrak USB is the only patent-pending solution for recovering removable media devices such as USB flash drives, external hard drives, digital camers, iPods and other USB storage devices.

Since not everyone is a thief, all GadgetTrak subscriptions come with our lost and found system. A GadgetTrak label that can be put on your devices. The label has a customized code with a URL for the finder to visit. When the code is put into the system it checks to see if the device belongs to a subscriber and if so presents the finder with a form to contact the owner. This system protects our subscribers identity while still allowing the finder to get in contact with the owner.

A laptop computer containing sensitive personal information about Butte Community Bank customers was stolen from an employee who travels to each of the bank’s fifteen (15) branch offices. The data appears to have been unencrypted and did not have any theft recovery software installed. The notice sent to customers state the data is “password protected” however this is trivial if the data is not encrypted. The theft occurred in the middle of October and the data includes the regular “steal my identity” information such as name, address, Social Security number, account numbers and other data. The Bank will not indicate how many customers were affected, or how many noticed were sent out.

Source: Paradise Post

At City University of New York a laptop was stolen from a financial aid office. The laptop contained sensitive personal information on the 23,000 current and former students.

Colleges are a hot bed for data theft, primarily due to lax security standards, absent minded professors and the wealth of data available for the taking. Colleges and Universities need to do more to protect student data, it is their responsibility to implement policies and enforce them, as well as educate staff (tenured or not) about the threats posed by careless handling of data. Had GadgetTrak Verey been installed on this laptop, the information on the system would have been difficult to access and the laptop recovered in a short amount of time limiting the risk of identity theft for these students.

Source: New York Post

In the recent recovery of an iPod in Dublin, Ohio for one of our subscribers, it was not just our subscribers property that was discovered. In addition several other stolen items were found.

In Australia during a recent drug bust 1,500 ecstasy tablets were found along with a weapons cache and several stolen iPods. It appears an outlaw motorcycle gang were responsible for the crimes, which appear to have been going on for quite some time. If GadgetTrak were installed on just one of those stolen iPods and the police followed up with the recovery, they could have discovered criminals much earlier on.

It is estimated that 5% of the time, when law enforcement go to recover stolen property they uncover larger crimes being commited, be it larger property crimes, weapons caches, drugs or more. With the data that GadgetTrak provides, law enforcement will have the evidence they need to get specific address details from Internet Service Providers and mobile phone carriers from where the devices are sending signals from.

A few weeks ago the UK government boasted that stolen mobile phones can be deactivated within 48 hours. True. However, circumventing the methods used to deactivate is not difficult as we have mentioned. However, there is another twist to this story, these stolen mobiles will still work overseas, the database that is used to reference if a phone is stolen or not is only accessed while using a UK network.

The methods imposed by the UK may deter a minor percentage of cell phone theft, however it will be a very small dent. Even if a stolen phone is deactivated, it does not help the owner of the device get it back. Only GadgetTrak PhoneBak software will help mobile owners get their devices back in the event they are stolen. GadgetTrak PhoneBak is also designed to work internationally, specifically with travelers in mind. If you are on a business trip in the United States and your phone is stolen, it can still notify phones in your home country with important information to help retrieve your device and catch a gadget thief.

A flash drive containing sensitive personal information was lost by a University of Nevada, Reno professor on October 19th, 2007 somewhere in downtown Reno. Let’s forget the fact that the sensitive data on this drive was NOT encrypted and the mass negligence for even storing such sensitive information on a small drive.

Had GadgetTrak been installed on this drive, when the thief attempted to access the drive it would have sent information to GadgetTrak that would help the authorities recover the drive, the thief and reduce the risk of identity theft for the 16,000 students whose data was stolen.
Source: Reno Gazette-Journal