Prey: Recover Your Stolen Device or Laptop. There are daunting circumstances where you realize that you’ve forgotten your laptop at a café table or a restaurant. Theft is an awful but omnipresent hazard. Fortunately you installed prey. With prey installed you can track your and control any of your lost devices.
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| Recover Your Stolen Device or Laptop |
Installation and Configuration of Prey
Prey is available in Windows, Linux, Mac, IOS and Android systems. Download the file and install it for your OS. If you are a new user to prey then you will have to select the “New user” option from the menu to proceed.
During the installation and setup process, you might be asked to select between two “Setup reporting methods”, which will determine how Prey can be activated. The first option which is also the easier one of the two is called “Prey + Control Panel”.
This method of setup requires you to register an account for free on "panel preyproject" of which you will have to confirm via e-mail. Alternatively, you may also choose the more detailed “Prey Standalone” option, which requires the use of your own web space for a fake website. By entering the URL into Prey, it will start to monitor this website and consistently check whether or not it is still online. In the event that your device is stolen you can just take the dummy website you created offline and immediately prey will be activated on your phone. This option is basically for advanced users.
For this guide we will select the recommended option(Prey +Control Panel). Which is the web based standard method.
After your account has been verified you can choose to create a shortcut on your desktop or not, that beats the point of it all which is stealth, so don’t. Your current device will be added to your Prey watch list account and the software will be integrated securely into your OS, so that it will be securely hidden and inaccessible to an intruder.
The prey app is very light (only occupying 5 MB of memory in Windows). While idle, its only function is to check online every 10 minutes to see if the device has been reported as stolen. All this is done in the background.
you can protect up to 3 devices with the prey app. but if you need to protect more devices you will need to pay. They prices are great for what it offers. The free version is also great. All the important feature sets are available.
How to activate and Set up Prey
After we’ve set all the defaults you can log into Prey’s web center, and take a look at the various tools and configurations that are available. Also note that you can track up to 3 devices for free.
Prey has a menu on its website with different toggles for options like screenshots, get nearby Wi-Fi, geo location etc. it’s advisable to turn them on, you never know which might come in handy.
When the worse happens
The important action to take in case your device goes missing (God forbid!) is to go to the Prey site, select your device and toggle the small slider to “Missing”. You can set the frequency of the report time to between 2-5 minutes, so as to get quick reports.
You already have a set of features already turned on.
Location Reporting
If GPS is available Prey will frequently send you emails with approximate location of your stolen device. In the case of a laptop prey will use geo-location data from Wi-Fi networks to triangulate its location.
Pictures
The prey app can take photos with your front camera and email them to you. That is also possible with your laptop’s webcam. But most laptop’s have a very tiny light come on when they’re activated. This could break your covert op, but still a handy and valuable feature to have.
Alarms and Remote wipe
When going covert isn’t working, you can force your device to ring at max volume. This will obstruct whatever the thief was doing with your device and continue ringing thereby grabbing attention. Hopefully you are close by to hear it.
You can also remote wipe your device. This will erase everything on the selected device.
Android Sim Protection
This is a unique feature that is very key in your search for your missing device. After you’ve setup prey with a particular Sim card. Then the worst happens-it gets stolen. Then the thief tries to swap out your Sim card. A message is immediately sent to the contact you set up in your Prey options. Am pretty sure this will help in hunting down the culprit.
This option (Android Sim Protection) in some way tackles Prey’s major flaw which is the fact that it has to be connected to the internet for it to function effectively.
Hopefully you never have to use Prey. But in case it’s good to know you have a chance of recovering your device.
Important Tip: To make sure that your device is completely secure from any hacks, you should lock your BIOS with a password to make it harder for the thief to simply format your hard drive.(For those that have Prey on their Laptops).
You can also check out Android Device Manager, made by Google. It’s a very good alternative to prey. Click here for more.
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