![\"\"](\"http:\/\/betanews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/laptop-notebook-woman-thief-e1364319117484-573x600.jpg\" "\\"laptop")
There are plenty of web services around which can try to help you find a stolen computer. Usually this involves equipping your system with a small agent of some kind, which then uses the system IP address, wifi connections and more to determine its current location, before communicating this to a central server.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019d like something more lightweight, though, there are a few simple free tools around which you might like to try. IPFetcher, for instance, won\u2019t grab images from your webcam, and can\u2019t lock down your system remotely. But it can retrieve a system\u2019s IP address, then email or upload it to an FTP server, and that\u2019s more than enough to be useful.<\/p>\n
The program arrives as a compact (1.2MB) download. Unzip this, install the two components included (IPFetcher.msi and IMFetcherBackend.msi) and reboot your PC.<\/p>\n
Launch IPFetcher from the Softraven section of the Start menu, and click either \u201cSet FTP\u201d or \u201cSet Mail\u201d, depending on which method you\u2019d like to use. In both cases you\u2019ll need to complete a form with your server names, account details and so on.<\/p>\n
Setting up the program is awkward – but you only have to do it once<\/p>\n
The \u201cSet Mail\u201d page includes a \u201cTest Mail\u201d button, which in theory should send a test message to confirm your settings are correct. But in practice this didn\u2019t work for us. If we tried it, the program interface would first stop responding for a while, before displaying a horribly technical .NET error message (even though we\u2019d entered the right information).<\/p>\n
There are other setup problems, too. Once you\u2019ve completed the form you\u2019ll probably click \u201cSave\u201d, but this just displays a less than clear error message. You\u2019ll have to click \u201cSet interval and log\u201d and set both the \u201cReset log count\u201d and \u201cRepeat hours\u201d (how often the location will be sent) values; \u201c200\u2033 and \u201c24 hours\u201d will be fine for now. We would manually start the service, too, just in case (click Service Settings > \u201cClick to manually start Service\u201d).<\/p>\n
Finally, enter a password in the box, click Save and reboot your PC.<\/p>\n
If this sounds all a little irritating, then it certainly was. But if you\u2019re interested in the idea, don\u2019t let it put you off. Once we were past the clumsy setup process we found IPFetcher worked very well, correctly retrieving our external IP address and emailing or uploading it as we\u2019d specified. And there\u2019s no further maintenance required, unless you change your email account or FTP server, anyway — it just works.<\/p>\n
Photo Credit:<\/strong>\u00a0Matt Antonino<\/a>\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/p>\n There are plenty of web services around which can try to help you find a stolen computer. Usually this involves equipping your system with a small agent of some kind, which then uses the system IP address, wifi connections and more to determine its current location, before communicating this to a central server. If you\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7429,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-648860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7429"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"