Beware of hotspots?
The San Francisco Chronicle published an article on Saturday highlighting a trend occuring in San Fran. Laptop thieves are targeting wireless cafes and hotspots and stealing people’s laptops.
Not all of the events are when people get up and go to the restroom either. Some instances are snatch and grab while you’re sitting there drinking your coffee, others follow you after you leave and forceably take your laptop bag, one instance a person was even stabbed in the process.
Why? The robbers can make a turn a quick profit on a very expensive item.
- Some pro-active measures to consider in light of the recent trend:
1. Don’t take your new shiny expensive laptop to the coffee shop.
Obviously this one may be a challenge if you’re working away from the office or only have a ‘new shiny expensive’ one to take with you. If you’re not sure of the area or the area has been targeted lately, leave your computer somewhere safe.
2. Consider packing a cable lock with you and locking it to the table while you’re there.
This would slow the snatch-and-grab potential and make someone else a better target. I always pack a cable lock with my power supply. You just never know when you’ll need it.
3. Encrypt the data on your laptop you don’t want compromised.
It’s easy to consider the stuff on your laptop as yours and private. But one mis-step and all your deep, dark secrets may be accessible to anyone who checks your laptop. Several open source choices exist for encrypting regardless of your OS. If you’re on a Mac, double your RAM and encrypt your account via FileVault.
4. BACKUP YOUR DATA.
Your reading this blog. You touch your computer tomorrow morning and *!POOF!* all your data is gone. How recent are your backups? “Backups” you say? “At least I’m better at backing up than parallel parking.” It will happen sometime. Someday your data will be gone and you’ll be kicking yourself about the missing data. It could be a theft, a hard drive failure, or a virus that deletes all your .DOCs. GO MAKE A BACKUP!
Original Article: San Francisco Chronicle - Laptop thieves descend upon wireless cafes
Grab-and-run robbers find pricey computers easy to resell, Saturday, 08 April 2006
Technorati Tags: steve watson, backup, laptop theft, data security, cable lock, san francisco
April 12th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
sorry I missed this post before I write mine. Thanks for the practical help for such a problem.
April 12th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
No worries. Glad to get the word out to people. It can be hard to find things here. I’ll watch to see the things you’re writing about.
November 21st, 2006 at 4:28 am
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