If there is a chance your notebook may be stolen or lost? Then this is a great tool that notifies you when your PC is connected from another location. This only works on the Firefox 3.5 browser – as far as I’m concerned, it is worth the change from any other browser.
FireFound, the Firefox add-on is simple to install, gives you a username and password on first login, which allows you to tweak your settings, like notifications on the distance it has to be moved for you to get a notifications, viewing or clearing recent movement data and then most important, what data can be deleted from your browser information if you want to do this after your PC has been redistributed. It would be great to do more deleting from a remote login – but I’m sure new versions address greater remote control.
A little glitch at the moment for me, is that when I use the Vodacom 3G connection, I get a report that the PC has moved from where I am to the Cape Town Beach Road location, when in fact I am in Port Elizabeth. I think this may be the break-out location for cell to data for Vodacom. But all I would need to do if it was redistributed (or lost if I was really dumb) is to exclude the second location point, and it would tell me where it was – which I would then report to the police – if they had not already located it before FireFound ;-).
It seems this ad-on was created to protect the person’s web browsing data – I think it is a true crime buster, and everybody should be using it to track where your notebook or PC may pop up once it has been stolen.
The person using the PC is unaware that the system is being monitored – all you would have to do is login to the FireFound system from any PC browser and check the location. You would also get an email if you set the distance variance to a few short miles.
I think this is a great application/plug-in, especially for our crime infested country.
Here is a screen shot on the location of my notebook while connected to the internet on my trip to Port Elizabeth.
Contributed by:
Malcolm Pearson
www.tech4law.co.za
