Make intruders say cheese

As the holiday season approaches, so too does prime time for laptop theft. There are a few commercial (Undercover from Orbicule, MacPhoneHome and LoJack for Laptops) and beta-in-progress (iAlertU from SlappingTurtle) options for tracking down your missing Mac, but for basic intelligence on machine intrusion attempts, a tip this morning on MacOSXHints gives a DIY approach to finding out who's been messin' where they shouldnta been a-messin'. With a basic script for capturing iSight stills and a check of a system log file for invalid login attempts, this tiny dancer will grab snapshots of your nosy coworkers or your thumbfingered spouse as they try to get into your machine.

If you're serious about preventing theft or facilitating recovery, probably best to go with either Undercover or this tip from Lifehacker via Laurie. Either way -- let's be careful out there.

Update 4:30pm: Of course, I forgot to mention that LANrev v4 has new anti-theft features. Brain... so... full... -- and of course it's SLAPPINGturtle. Argh!

Thanks Jeff L. and David C.!