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A comment on How I Got My Stolen Laptop Back Within 24 Hours Using Prey. Parent comment

Re:How I Got My Stolen Laptop Back Within 24 Hours Using Prey by sorbus on Wednesday September 07, 2011 @03:50PM (#2971111)
Yeah, if it's impossible for a thief to use the computer then Prey is useless. It's why I have a guest account on my computer: if someone steals it, I want them to be able to get it online so that I have some chance of recovering it.
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Re:How I Got My Stolen Laptop Back Within 24 Hours Using Prey by wgx on Wednesday September 07, 2011 @04:00PM (#2971154)
Just checked, and you can't use Guest accounts if FileVault is on (makes sense of course).
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Re:How I Got My Stolen Laptop Back Within 24 Hours Using Prey by codenerdz on Wednesday September 07, 2011 @04:44PM (#2971355)
Thats a problem i have as well, filefault 2 is great, but the end user/thief wont be able to report his location via a prey app. There is got to be a workaround....
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Re:How I Got My Stolen Laptop Back Within 24 Hours Using Prey by Dobbs on Wednesday September 07, 2011 @04:55PM (#2971403)
The easiest is to make two installs of OSX on the machine. The first has full admin access and prey running. The second has full disk encryption and locked down.

Default boot into the first partition. If the system is stolen they will reboot and you can track. Because it has full admin they are less likely to reinstall.

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Re:How I Got My Stolen Laptop Back Within 24 Hours Using Prey by bluebl8de on Thursday September 08, 2011 @02:18AM (#2972830)
That doesn't seem very practical.
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Re:How I Got My Stolen Laptop Back Within 24 Hours Using Prey by jrockway on Thursday September 08, 2011 @06:27AM (#2973303)
It is if you make a habit of leaving your laptop laying around unlocked and enjoy writing blog posts to that effect.

Oh, but for actually using the computer? Yeah, somewhat impractical.

(My worry is not the $1000 I sunk on an easily-replaceable chunk of plastic wrapped around my data. It's my data. So my laptop boots up to "type the encryption key", and if you don't know it, you have to erase the disk and install your own OS, keeping my data safe. I'd rather my private data stay private than to take a picture of someone stealing my laptop. Also, my laptop never gets stolen.)

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Re:How I Got My Stolen Laptop Back Within 24 Hours Using Prey by ricardobeat on Wednesday September 07, 2011 @04:56PM (#2971410)
Create another account and give out the password in the login screen (either check "Show password hint" or go to Security & Privacy -> show a message when the screen is locked).
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