Laptop missing cases are increasing day by day. Some of us already experienced this in the past. It’s really sad and a sense less act.This is not limited to laptops but ipods, gadgets etc.

One of my friend bought brand new Mac Book and lost on the very same day in the office. We informed to security and sent mailers as well. The security checked the CC camera tapes but nothing worked out.  Months gone and the matter will not an issue any more but my friend still remembering his Mac Book which he bought though a friend from U.S.

This kind of incidents happened to some of us or to our friends. Most of us don’t focus on the security part of our laptops, once it’s missed then we’ll feel the miss. Instead of that we can run simple free software to track the laptop from any where. Kensington lock is one of the known ways to protect laptops. But we have to buy externally and when thief tries to break it then the chances of damage to laptop is high.

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.

Adeona is designed to use the Open Source OpenDHT distributed storage service to store location updates sent by a small software client installed on an owner’s laptop. The client continually monitors the current location of the laptop, gathering information (such as IP addresses and local network topology) that can be used to identify its current location. The client then uses strong cryptographic mechanisms to not only encrypt the location data, but also ensure that the ciphertexts stored within OpenDHT are anonymous and unlinkable. At the same time, it is easy for an owner to retrieve location information.

Adeona has three main properties:

• Private: Adeona uses state-of-the-art cryptographic mechanisms to ensure that the owner is the only party that can use the system to reveal the locations visited by a device.
• Reliable: Adeona uses a community-based remote storage facility, ensuring retrievability of recent location updates.
• Open source and free: Adeona’s software is licensed under GPLv2. While your locations are secret, the tracking system’s design is not.

The Mac OS X version also has an option to capture pictures of the laptop user or thief using the built-in iSight camera and the freeware tool isightcapture. Like your location information, these images are privacy-protected so that only the laptop owner (or an agent of the owner’s choosing) can access them.

Download Adeona’s location tracking software here and follow the installation process