On April, 28th, 2008, while having a peaceful breakfast in a very nice town along an Interstate in the State of Washington, I found that my Ford Expedition had been broken into. Besides stealing all of our suitcases, medications, cell phone with broken charger, they also stole my wife's laptop.
On the computer was some very critical data that, in the wrong hands, could lead to identity theft. Not the best way to come home from a nice weekend.
We spent the next 6 ½ hours on the phone with Credit Card Companies, banks, and anyone we thought might need to know of this possible breech of information. The thieves - in their haste - did not see my laptop tucked behind my seat.
After visiting with the men in blue for a police report, we started the drive home. 1st Stop: A Washington State rest area where we bought Wifi and changed whatever things we could online. 1st call: To Lifelock.com This is the company where the owner parades a van around town with his Social Security Number on the side and begs people to try and steal his identity. They claim to keep your identity safe and secure even in situations like this.
Now the insurance company, was great, paid everything except for the deductible on vehicle damage and the deductible of the personal property (which falls under the homeowners policy). Check your policy for limitations.
We now use jump drives (also known as flash drives) to store important info in an encrypted program (Keypass) so it is NOT on the computer, for even more safety.
Now that we have a new laptop, we were looking at ways to maintain security on it even better. There is software that, wheninstalled on your laptop, sends vital data (like where it is), to a computer, where you can retrieve the information and then give it to Law Enforcement. They can track down your goods. We downloaded a program called Adeona.
This program can be downloaded from the University of Washington website. It gives you important information you can give to the police to assist them in getting your computer back.
I also found a pay service from a company called LoJack that does basically the same thing. Once you give it permission, when your computer contacts the LoJack service it can immediately delete your hard drive keeping your data out of the hands of "would be" criminals.
I hope this gives you some insight into some extra steps you can take to protect yourself and your personal information.
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