Adeona is a free and open source tool for recovering a lost or stolen laptop. Install it on your computer and then if your laptop disappears, you can track where (IP address and location) it is being used and work to recover it.

It also works hard to maintain your privacy on an ongoing basis:

“Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there’s no need to rely on a single third party. What’s more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner’s choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.”

Developed by two University of Washington Ph.D. students, this is a great tool to keep in your kit.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Open Source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.