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Undercover 5: the best way to secure and recover a stolen Mac
A few years ago I wrote about Orbicule's Undercover 4 software. Undercover lets you remotely track and monitor a missing Mac, and can even help you recover your stolen gear. Given the Mac security issues in the news over the last few days, it's worthwhile reviewing some best practices to help keep your Mac as secure as it can be. That's why I'm happy to tell you that Orbicule has come out with a brand new version of its security and recovery software: Undercover 5. Undercover is sometimes compared to iCloud's Find My iPhone/iPad/Mac feature. However, Apple's Find My device feature pales compared to Orbicule's Undercover 5. Load the software on your computer and it silently runs in the background constantly monitoring your Mac's location. Should your Mac go missing, you can go to www.undercoverhq.com and start tracking your Mac remotely. From the Undercover HQ center you can see the current and past locations of your Mac, quietly activate your Mac's FaceTime camera to take photos of the thief, and quietly take screenshots so you can see what the thief is doing at any given time. All of this is done incognito, so the temporary new custodian of your laptop won't have any idea that they're being monitored every moment. But the best feature about Undercover 5 is that you can now activate a keylogger, so every single thing the thief types -- from Facebook usernames and passwords, to instant messages, to emails to his accomplices and/or parole officer are all logged and sent back to you to view in your Undercover HQ dashboard. After you've collected FaceTime pics, geolocations, screenshots, and keylog files (all shown automatically in your "Thief Report" section of the Undercover HQ center) you can quickly and simply submit all this information to the local police. But what's even cooler -- and a bit out of a Hollywood movie -- is that if the police can't recover the stolen Mac, you can always resort to Undercover's aptly named "Plan B." Plan B allows you to launch a simulated hardware failure on your Mac so the thief has no choice but to take it into an Apple Store for repair. Once you track it to the Apple Store (or Best Buy or wherever) you then activate part two of plan B -- you tell the Mac to display a message on the screen saying the Mac has been stolen and the repair shop should hold onto it and call the police. I cannot recommend Undercover 5 enough. It's especially important for those of you who just splashed all that cash on a MacBook Pro with Retina display, but at only US$49.00 for one license (licenses of 5 for $59.00 or 25 Macs for $299 are available -- as are student discounts) every owner of any kind of Mac should purchase Undercover 5. And for those of you wondering, Undercover 5 cannot be deleted off your Mac without your administrator password and even then the thief would need to know that Undercover is actually installed, which is very hard to know since there is no app icon or any kind of System Preference settings. Undercover is kind of like Batman; it works silently in the background and the bad guy never knows it's there until it's too late (sure, a thief could restore your Mac, but that's impossible to do if you set a firmware password). Check out the video below that shows how Undercover 5 works, then do yourself a favor and buy the software. If your Mac is ever nicked, you'll thank yourself for it.
Witness for iPhone turns your Mac into a home alarm system
If you have $40 and a recent Mac with an iSight camera, then you have the makings of a simple home surveillance system thanks to Witness. Developed by Orbicule, Witness is a surveillance app that turns your Mac's camera into a motion sensor. The application runs in the background on your computer and will begin recording video or photos if motion is detected. The system includes a free remote iOS app compatible with the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. When an intruder is detected, Witness will send a notification to your iOS device and your web browser if it is open. Photos and video captured by the Witness app are available online and can be viewed using a web browser or via the Witness Remote application. While it is not as robust as a dedicated multi-camera home surveillance system, Witness is an inexpensive alternative that would work well in homes where the computer is located near the door or other routes of entry. Besides intruder detection, it can also be used to spy on others in your house or office, which is especially useful if you want to find out who is lifting all the pens from your desk or stealing the cookies from the cookie jar.
Orbicule releases Undercover 4
Orbicule has released Undercover 4 and thieves should be very afraid. Undercover is theft-recovery software for Mac OS X that's been around for the last four years. The software allows users to grab screen shots of the thief using their computer via the Mac's built-in iSight camera and will also send screen shots of your stolen Mac's desktop back to you so you can see what the thief is doing. Undercover also uses Skyhook Wireless technology to locate your stolen Mac within a range of 10-20 meters. Undercover 4 adds the ability for users to remotely monitor a stolen Mac using the UndercoverCenter.com web application. You can use the new UndercoverCenter by yourself or in conjunction with your local police force if they are helping you track down your stolen laptop. The UndercoverCenter will allow you to receive a Google Earth file pinpointing the stolen Mac's locations. In addition, you can use UndercoverCenter to completely lock the lost or stolen Mac and set a custom message that is displayed on top of all other applications. Best of all, if the thief is using your Mac in a public location, Undercover allows you to tell your stolen Mac to start shouting "Help! Help! I'm a stolen Mac" via VoiceOver technology. Undercover 4 costs $49 and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or above.
"Undercover" software helps recover your stolen MacBook
So you coughed up some dough for that iAlertU program to protect your MacBook, but wouldn't you know it, your laptop got jacked anyway by a clever thief who simply removed the battery before taking off. Luckily for you, all is not lost, at least not if you'd installed another program called Undercover on your machine, which not only sends out an IP-address-containing SOS if it's reported stolen, but actually uses your machine's built-in iSight to snap a photo of the perp before simulating a screen failure that makes the Mac unusable. Every six minutes, Undercover pings a database maintained by developer Orbicule to check if the machine it's installed on has been stolen; a positive reply from the server initiates a sequence of events that hopefully ends with law enforcement officials breaking down the door of the nefarious Macjacker's pad and recovering your beloved notebook. In case the crook was smart enough to never reconnect to the Internet after the heist, however, you'll still need to file an insurance claim and head down to the old Apple store -- looks like they still haven't found a software solution that beats the trusty Kensington Lock.
