Adeona from University of Washington provides an open source, free and completely non-proprietary way to track your stolen laptop. You can install Adeona on your laptop and go as there’s no need to rely on a single third party! What’s more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner’s choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can be rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.

The software is available for Windows XP, Mac OSX, and Linux !!! Only the Mac OSX version takes pictures right now, but I am sure that the Windows and Linux versions will catch up eventually. But at least you can have your laptop send to you it’s IP hookups, and nearby routers, and any wireless access point that it used.

The uses keep on coming, for if you install this client on your companies desktops, and they are stolen, and the OS is not wiped then you can track them as well !!