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Level 2

231 points

Protecting Macbookpro in case it gets stolen

I am looking in to getting some protection to recover and make life hard for a thief, if my MBP should get stolen.

I found several products doing a search. They are for example: GadgetTrak Laptop Security, Hidden, LoJack for Laptops, Rest safe.

My question is has anybody any experience with any of these products, or other ones, that you would say is a good investment and worth it. Or possible other ways of doing so that I did not think of.

Love to hear your knowledge before I invest.

MBP, MM, MBP - 10.6 + Windooz XP on a hard partition

Posted on Apr 18, 2012 2:11 AM

24 replies

Bart1977

Level 2

287 points

Jul 24, 2012 2:06 AM in response to ChangeAgent

Other accounts (including the guest account) cannot see the contents of other users' home folders.

Turning on File Vault will of course be best, because everything is encrypted. Trouble is, the guest account is not available anymore with File Vault turned on.

ChangeAgent Author

Level 2

231 points

Jul 24, 2012 2:12 AM in response to Bart1977

Bart1977 wrote:

Other accounts (including the guest account) cannot see the contents of other users' home folders.

I know that but as I said it is about the other partitions.

FV is not an option, to many problems with it and as you said no guest account.

Bart1977

Level 2

287 points

Jul 24, 2012 2:29 AM in response to ChangeAgent

Ah, sorry, I misread your last message. What I do, is to just go to the other disk, and for all directories, I open the Get Info window. I remove all rights, such that it says:

Name	Privilege
Bart1977 (Me)	Read & Write
everyone	No access

You might also be able to use the commandline (chown/chmod command) to set rights for the complete folder under which the disk is mounted. But I haven't tried that.

ChangeAgent Author

Level 2

231 points

Jul 24, 2012 2:50 AM in response to Bart1977

I tried that before posting, but it does not work

ChangeAgent Author

Level 2

231 points

Jul 24, 2012 7:39 AM in response to Bart1977

Bart1977 wrote:

You might also be able to use the commandline (chown/chmod command) to set rights for the complete folder under which the disk is mounted. But I haven't tried that.

how would one do that Bart?

Eric

Level 7

23,993 points

Jul 24, 2012 7:46 AM in response to ChangeAgent

In Lion, with iCloud you have a "Find my mac" and "Lock my map" and "Wipe my mac" remote control capability.

<Sorry, I didn't see page 2 and was responding to the original question, now a bit outdated I guess.>

charlie

Bart1977

Level 2

287 points

Jul 24, 2012 8:17 AM in response to ChangeAgent

Heh, using the commandline didn't work so well, it turns out.

My idea was to create a custom directory under /Volumes, then mount the disk under that directory. It doesn't work, because the mount command (diskutil mount) does not have a UID and a GID option. This should set the rights of the custom directory to the correct user and group ID. But diskutil doesn't seem to have a specific option for this...

ChangeAgent Author

Level 2

231 points

Jul 24, 2012 9:23 AM in response to Bart1977

Bart, thanks, good thinking but no cigar. thanks.

ChangeAgent Author

Level 2

231 points

Jul 24, 2012 9:24 AM in response to CT

Thanks CT, we are still on SL though.

Protecting Macbookpro in case it gets stolen