Can You Trace The MAC Address of a Stolen Computer? - Discuss
Monday June 9, 2008
From a community member -
→ More - How to Find a MAC Address
→ See also - Using Remote Desktop to Catch a Computer Thief
"I had my laptop stolen ... . Is there any way I can trace the MAC address, from the computer company, or from a computer that was networked to it?"Unfortunately, tracing MAC addresses in this way is usually not a practical solution. If you have any better suggestions to offer, post them on our message board. Discuss: Can You Trace The MAC Address of a Stolen Computer?
→ More - How to Find a MAC Address
→ See also - Using Remote Desktop to Catch a Computer Thief
Comments
i think it is , but u have to offer more time to do it .
or Apple will be easy trace it ?
I recently had my Gateway computer stolen in June of this year. Tracking the MAC address is the approach I have also considered in finding it. But, it does not not seem practical, from what I have heard and read. Simple firewalls may block this effort inside or outside a local area network. Vista has a command line call called “getmac.exe” that retrieves the MAC address. This call makes a low-level to the BIOS. The “getmac.exe” likely calls to the WMI layer which in turn calls into the BIOS to get the MAC address for you. It appears that a remote call or sets of calls is possible in a local network to search a domain or 192.168.X.X, a Class C private network, given one can ping the machine you are looking for. But, a remote search across the whole internet seems impractible if not almost impossible. Supportive ISPs would likel not be able to help if the computer in question is part of pooled set of computers behind by a router that masks the computer’s true IP as private. Still, if all the ISPs supported this effort, you might get lucky. Even if this could work, it would be a lot of work and require great coordination.
If people would be willing to take ease on privacy concerns, maybe the government could set a policy mandate that the MAC address of any machine on a network connected to the internet be locateable regardless of firewall, router, etc… I do not think this will happen. An internet request would have to come through an open port like port 80, the standard HTML internet port, or possibly the port for SMTP. Again, personally, this effort seems rather futile right now.
On a brighter note, I recently got a new replacement laptop from Gateway. The model is P173XL FX. It now has Lojack support with Computrace Lojack for Laptops (www.absolute.com). On purchase the user must load some software and activate Lojack support with a license activation key provided the company. After activation, if the laptop is reported stolen, the laptop will be tracked by the lojack provider over the internet. Any attempt to reformat the hard drive(s) is futile. The tracking software is built into the motherboard BIOS and it is reloaded to the hard drive on boot up if not found. Preferably, I would like to have seen a dedicated chip with password on the motherboard that could not in any way be reflashed at a later time, possibly with the exception of backdoor password at Gateway and/or the lojack provider. At this point, I am not clear on how easy it is to reflash the laptop BIOS or to replace the BIOS with one that does not have the Lojack software; this might be a weakness for the experienced thief. But, this is a great step forward for laptop security. If your computer happens to have Lojack support but it has never been activated, you might want to speak with recovery support personnel for the Computrace Lojack for Laptops product to see if they can remotely activate this feature. Anyway, I think this is a big step forward on security of laptops. You might also want to look at GadgetTrak (www.gadgettrak.com).
James Sigler
Dallas, TX