Tracking a stolen laptop

greens

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Jan 27, 2012
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You can't. You could in theory with a MAC address. This would only work locally though.
Say at a school, a MAC address could be tracked down within the network.

In the WAN, you're out of luck as the IP address takes over and is not unique to any specific device.
 

greens

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Jan 27, 2012
244
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You can't. You could in theory with a MAC address. This would only work locally though.
Say at a school, a MAC address could be tracked down within the network.

In the WAN, you're out of luck as the IP address takes over and is not unique to any specific device.
 

little_me

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May 9, 2015
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After the theft, pretty impossible unless prepared for beforehand.
Microsoft/google kind of allow "track my laptop" thing, if set to be tracked beforehand, that only tells general idea and ONLY if it is connected to internet.
And that only works if the people who stole it, don't do the "wise" option of factory resetting it, in which case said options go out of window.
Same applies to services offered by some antivirus softwares.

The tracking needs internet access for laptop and the software to tell it to do it, doing it with serial number only is not going to happen.
 

Rogue Leader

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Moderator
Without having already installed some sort of program that allows you to track it you're out of luck. Give the serial to the police and if they find it they will return it. Its however, unlikely.
 
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