“This articicle was originally posted on Aug 2, 2005 and was lost due to Host HDD crash. I reporduce it here from my original draft.”

There was a mail forwarded to me this morning claiming that thieves these days have the capability to detect notebook kept in cars, even in the booth of the cars. The forward was actually a mail exchange between a consumer and Tesco executive regarding laptop theft in Tesco Penang. I was curious on the “advance technology” that could detect laptop in cars and even in the booth of the car.

Initially I though it was some kind of Electromagnetic (EM) detector, that could distinguish EM signals emitting from laptops. Laptop is full of micro circuitry and no matter how great the design is, there are somehow some level of EM emission. The question I was trying to answer was how strong the EM signal would be for a laptop during sleep mode and during normal operation mode. And if the signal was strong enough to go through the car body. Could anyone develop a handheld device to detect such EM signals.

After googling for “detecting laptop in cars”, I found that the answer was not EM detection at all. It was actually the use of Bluetooth technology. Laptops that are in stanby mode (sleep/hibernation) still have the bluetooth active. And because of this, anyone with a bluetooth enabled phone could just scan the environment and detect the laptops. Now, there are several questions regarding the practicality of this method. Can the user triangulate the signal? Meaning, if the thief has another laptop in his car (3 of them) and he drives around scanning, can he use software to triangulate the Bluetooth signal and determine the location? Possible theoretically and with some more engineering, it might work.

EM, Bluetooth, are sophisticated ways to commit crime. The interesting thing is no one (at least I have not found any) has reported these thieves to be caught red handed. Therefore the idea still stands as technologically possible and possibly a myth. (lets forward this to the myth busters to see if they could test it out)

There are many low tech ways to find out or guess if a laptop are in the car. In Penang, especially close to the Free Trade Zone areas, many companies provide laptop to the employees, and by looking at the car for company badges one could guess if a laptop is in the car or not, especially on a week day right after working hours, the employee could have came straight from work and not go home yet. The laptop will most likely in the car. On a different approach, the thief may not need such knowledge at all. Many people who carry laptop put the device in the car seat as they enters the car. And when they arrives at the shopping complexes, they transfer the laptop to the booth, and go shopping. A thief could just sits in the car and wait for such people to appear and when the victim leaves the car for shopping, the thief just does his job and leaves.

There are no total protection from laptop theft. Its like there is no total protection from thieves breaking into your home or thieves stealing an expensive art from a well protected museum. Exercise situation awareness and good protection practice will deter the small wannabe thieves. Nothing will stop the Pro.

On this day..

• Mamma Mia! The Movie - 2008
• Fuck! you're Cool - 2008
• The Boys have Grown - 2007
• phelios game depot - 2007
• Personalized Boutique shopping at tobi.com - 2007
• Concierto Wallpaper Pack - 2007
• Kimberly Street Char Koay Teow - 2006