We were featured in a great piece by Good Morning America on Christmas Day regarding how to protect the gadgets your received on Christmas Day. GadgetTrak was featured as tip number two:

GadgetTrak uses GPS and WiFi signals to locate your lost electronic and lock it down remotely so a thief cannot use it and police can track it.

Read the full story on Good Morning America

This is actually the second time GadgetTrak has featured on Good Morning America, in a previous episode our technology was also described in more depth with technology corespondent Becky Worley:

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.  But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” - 1984 George Orwell

We are often asked, why we choose to not have location, images and network data sent to our servers, or grant our staff access to customers’ systems. This is by design and has to do with our personal philosophies and a direct reaction to traditional theft recovery solutions which ask you to trade your privacy for security ( not unlike the Mafia ).

We have seen technology evolve at an alarming rate, our mobile devices have become smaller, smarter and more portable. The saturation of expensive portable electronic devices into our society makes them prime targets for thieves of course, particularly with the current economic downturn. However in addition to the portability of these devices, we have become more reliant on them, trusting these devices with our personal information, financial, medical and other sensitive information. To add to this complexity as these devices become more networked the data is many times not just stored on the device itself, but across vast data grids and across social networking sites.

This evolution of technology raises serious security and privacy concerns. Just a few years agowe would worried that a hackers or governments could track what websites we have visit, but now  mobile computing devices can track where we are at all times as well as use cameras to capture images of us. Today it is conceivable that we can be tracked wherever we go, both online and offline.

GadgetTrak has been a pioneer in the development of innovative solutions to curb device theft. GadgetTrak is the only company that has recovered stolen iPods using our patented tracking technologies.  GadgetTrak is also the first to combine the latest in wi-fi positioning with social media to assist in the recovery of devices, while still protecting your privacy. Competing theft recovery products rely on a more traditional and invasive methods, they have monitoring centers staffed with employees who can activate your web camera, access your files and other privacy and security intrusions. Some of these companies have had massive security oversights that have put their customers’ systems and identity at risk, many of these companies are not based in the U.S. and so many data protection laws that have been established to protect consumers are not recognized or respected and security and privacy are after thoughts in the product development.

When a company says that you should trust them with a backdoor into your system, you should consider what happend recently with U.S. Presiden Barack Obama.  Verizon employee accessed Obama’s mobile phone records, which is of course against Verizon’s policies and is highly illegal. Curiosity is a human trait, now imagine what could happen when an employee has access to thousands of customers systems including the ability to activate web cameras and access sensitive data. The weakest link in any security chain is the human one.

This software behaves similarly to what has been termed GhostNet which is a cyber-espionage network that infects computers for the purposes of providing a foreign government access to systems, the only difference is that instead of a government it is a company. As many of these companies are based outside the U.S. one could be paranoid and wonder if there would be any condition or situation where control of customer’s systems would be granted to government agencies, or what could occur if these companies monitoring center systems security is compromised and hijacked and given the security lapses by some this is more likely than one may think.

Some of these companies will say that they serve as the middle-men to your data and camera to better protect you, stating that only they know how to work with the police. This is a flat out lie. At GadgetTrak we also assist you in the recovery of devices and have an excellent recovery rate, being a U.S. based company we are also approached by law enforcement agencies regularly to provide assistance and training. The difference is that you get to choose what data is passed to us,  not a third-party, you are empowered to choose what happens to the data our software collects.  If a company is not transparent with what and how they are collecting data and say it is only they who can work with the police, you should be suspect.

GadgetTrak’s software has been designed to recover devices while still respecting privacy by not putting any back-doors into your systems, or having images, location or network data sent to us. You should never be asked to trade your privacy for security. At GadgetTrak we provide peace of mind, not only by ensuring the security of your devices, but also your privacy.

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

The Urban Institute has released a report making a bold assertion that there is a direct co-relation between iPods and the recent jump of violent crimes in the United States. Now, as much as we would like to agree with the Urban Institute we found several flaws in their argument that we could not let pass, the primary on being that iPods are singled out.

In the report, it is stated that FBI statistics have shown an increase in violent crime from 2005-2006, this is true. Homicides and robberies are way up from the previous year, with a stronger focus on robberies. However they assert that the rise of theft is related to the sales of iPods and other removable media devices. This is difficult to prove as the national crime databases classify iPods and other media devices as “merchandise” so there is no data collected regarding specific models. In the report the quote “anecdotal evidence” however this comprises existing stories from the media, which at many times target iPods as they are the “Coke” of music players and so Apple is low hanging fruit. iPods may be part of the equation, but I think that the Urban Institute puts a little too much blame on iPods and is missing the forest for the trees.

The rapid sales of iPods and removable media devices are not an isolated pheonmena, but a tip of the iceberg reflecting a shift in our society. It does not take much research to see that our society is becoming more mobile, laptops outsell desktop systems, mobile phones and PDAs are computers themselves, not to mention our reliance on portable GPS systems, flash drives, portable game consoles such as the Sony PSP and the list goes on. Every day it seems we hear about another laptop theft, and our friends at JustStolen.net have been telling us about law enforcement seeing a rising occurence of GPS devices being stolen from cars.

One could make a case that theft is actually the oldest profession; it will not go away and will evolve with technology. To fight the theft of mobile devices, we need to change our approach, the old model will no longer work in theft prevention. This is the prime reason that GadgetTrak was created, as an innovative way to utilize technology to protect our customers’ devices.

Of course I am not going to say that Apple promotes iPod theft, however I can make a case that they do profit from it. Because odds are that once you iPod is stolen you are going to buy another one.

Witnesses to the Crime

Those who own iPods invariably also have iTunes installed on their computers, which also connects to the iTunes store. When you connect to the iTunes store that the serial number of your iPod is sent to Apple and that if your iPod were stolen Apple could do something about it, by identifying the perpetrator. But is this really a business that they want to get into?

Why Apple Doesn’t Save the Day?

So why is it that Apple does not assist their customers when their iPods are stolen? The short answer is that it would be a privacy nightmare for Apple to track customers in this way as they have a great deal of personally identifiable information available to them which they can tie to a device.  If Apple were to start helping folks recover stolen iPods by tracking devices down by their serial numbers it would bring attention to the very fact that THEY ARE TRACKING YOU. This would be bad PR and the benefit of helping a handful of customers who have had their iPods stolen would not be worth the added logistical, legal and PR issues that would arise if they started doing this and it would seriously affect the bottom line.

iPod Theft Makes Repeat Customers

If you are an honest Joe, who saved hard to buy your iPod odds are you also purchase music through iTunes legally. The music purchased on iTunes by default are in a proprietary format that only Apple music players can play, unless you illegally convert the files to another format (or you can purchase the rights to download in a different format which costs more money).

Choose A New Player: As Long As It Is An iPod

If your iPod is stolen, what are your options if you want to load your library of legally purchased music onto another player. Well you have many choices as long as it is an iPod, say an iPod Nano, iPod video, iPod Shuffle and the friendly folks at Apple even let you choose your color, even a cute red one that just screams “I am a bright red iPod, please steal me”.

It is no surprise that iPod theft is on the rise. There have been more than 85 million iPods sold. If you factor in all of the other brands of MP3 players out there and other gadgets such as PSPs, digital cameras and USB flash drives that are so tiny and easy to steal, nobody should really be too shocked.

San Francisco has raised an alarm recently regarding the number of iPod thefts in the Bay Area. In 2004 there were only 4 reported iPod thefts, in 2005 this number jumped to 102, then in 2006 this number leaped to 193. This of course is only showing the number of actual reported thefts.

These statistics are not limited to San Francisco. The number of crimes involving iPods and other small gadgets are on the rise in every major city. Some of these crimes are violent, involving larger scale thefts, assault and even murder.

iPod Theft Under Reported

We know the actual theft number is much higher, as many do not see any reason to report the iPod theft as they feel there is nothing law enforcement can really do to get the device back. Which in part has been true, as all you can do is fill out a police report and hope that your device turns up, but the odds are against you.

Serial Number Registration Services Are Suspect

There are a number services out there which will ask you to pay a fee to register your iPod or device with them for a small fee. In return if a your device is stolen or missing and somebody goes to THEIR website and searches for the serial number of your iPod (that long number in tiny text on back) they will magically recover your device. This we feel is quite suspect, as the odds of this occurring are quite slim, especially if the device has been stolen.

Active Tracking Solution

GadgetTrak on the other had has a more active approach when it comes to returning your devices. The GadgetTrak service provides more aggressive electronic measures for returning your device. Our patent-pending system functions as a trap for ipod and gadget thieves. When these devices are accessed the agent software is activated and initializes communication with the GadgetTrak server. When this process occurs information is shared with the server regarding the system that it is currently plugged into, providing clues that can assist law enforcement in recovering the device.