Had my Toshiba laptop stolen out of my car last night. Anyway to track it to find it? If it keeps sending processed units can that help?
Any ideas?

thanks in advance

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Had my Toshiba laptop stolen out of my car last night. Anyway to track it to find it? If it keeps sending processed units can that help?
Any ideas?

thanks in advance

You can log into you account and check the IP address(s) it uses. Unfortunately, if the crook doesn't connect it to his IP but steals neighbors wifi it won't get it back to you. Pass the IP's and times on to the police.

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If it contacts the SETI servers after it is stolen, it will get an IP address from the location it is in. This IP address can be tracked down to a specific location, and further tools can match the MAC address of the physical adapter to the IP address used.

If the above indeed happens, I strongly suggest contacting Dr. Eric Korpela. He will be able to provide any technical information to the authorities to help you attempt to recover your laptop.

Yes, it can - and it has been done in the past, with successful outcomes. I haven't seen a write-up for some years, so it'll take a while to track down, but you can start checking immediately.

The key, as you say, is the continued return of workunits. Not the workunits themselves, but the fact that the computer is online and contacting the SETI servers.

When you're logged in, and you go to your account page, you can click through to the 'details' page for the computer in question. At the very top, you (but nobody else) will see a link 'Show IP address'. Click that, and you'll see either one or two IP addresses, depending how the computer last connected to the internet.

Be ready to start keeping a detailled, precise, record of every IP address you see: and, very important a precise note of the time. That's the time for 'Last time contacted server' further down the same page, rather than the time you're checking it (though that might be useful too, just in case).

Once you're sure that the laptop is still phoning home (and that it's not using your own IP address any more), take your IP and contact time log to the police and add it to your crime report. They can look up which internet service provider allocated that IP address, and they can subpoena the service provider to supply them the name and address of the customer who was using that IP address at the contact time. Won't help much if it's a Starbucks open access point (though it might tell you how far away it's been taken), but if it turns out to be a home router, then the police can get a search warrant and break in to recover it.

I say the police 'can' do these things, but they may need some persuading and technical assistance. If you hit any obstructions, David Anderson of BOINC will back you up - he's done that before, and got the laptop back to its rightful owner. It's good publicity for BOINC when that happens, so you'll find him helpful, if sometimes elusive.

I'll go and find those references, while you set up your logbook.

Had my Toshiba laptop stolen out of my car last night. Anyway to track it to find it? If it keeps sending processed units can that help?
Any ideas?

thanks in advance

On the host details you, and only you, can access the "Show IP address" link to see if the external IP has changed since you used it last.
Unless it was stolen for personal use. Which seems to happen often these days somehow. It would have most likely been sold to someone that that wiped it on power up.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

BOINC helps recover stolen laptop

Yet another reason to run SETI@home - it can help recover stolen laptops.

Thanks for all the good info. As of today no talky talky with the server, so they may have did the wipe for resell. I will keep monitoring and hope for the best.

thanks again

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I got a server contact with an external IP When I googled the number it came back from Viet Nam. Is the External IP Seti? or whats the deal on this.

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The External IP is not SETI. The external IP is the IP address the laptop is either assigned to by an ISP, or is the NAT'd address behind a router or firewall.

Make sure you note the date and time of any connects (in UTC and your time)so that you have proof when talking to police.

And screen shoots tell a lot. take full screen screen shots that show your date/time as well as the laptop connect times.

The more info you have, the easier (and willingness of others to even look at it) it will be for everyone.

EDIT: And most importantly ... Are they at least running it long enough to perform useful scientific research for SETI? :))

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If it contacts the SETI servers after it is stolen, it will get an IP address from the location it is in. This IP address can be tracked down to a specific location, and further tools can match the MAC address of the physical adapter to the IP address used.

If the above indeed happens, I strongly suggest contacting Dr. Eric Korpela. He will be able to provide any technical information to the authorities to help you attempt to recover your laptop.

Provided the laptop is connected wired.

The problem, is crook is in an apartment house and uses several different neighbors unsecured wi-fi signals. Even though the cops have an address, they still don't know which door to knock on. A court will not issue a warrant. There were a couple of very bad busts that happened when they went after who they thought was downloading kiddie porno based on the IP only to find innocent people at the registered address and an unsecured wi-fi. They will no longer go on such goose chases. But if the computer uses the same IP for a week or two running, then it establishes reasonable cause to think it is on a wired connection and they might convince a judge.

Now if it was national security, you might be able to get the ISP to backdoor the router to see if the wi-fi is password protected, but not for a stolen laptop. And then they might even take a drive over and use a signal sniffer to find it. This is a lot of manpower hours on tight budgets for most departments.

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I got a server contact with an external IP When I googled the number it came back from Viet Nam. Is the External IP Seti? or whats the deal on this.

It's very possible that it has been shipped out of the country. I worked for a recycling company and we sold a lot of the computers for shipment overseas, to Africa and south Asia. We obviously always wiped the drives clean before selling them.

I got a server contact with an external IP When I googled the number it came back from Viet Nam.

Is this the "Toshiba laptop" you talk about:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=4773816

Your first Post: 9 Feb 2015
Last contact 13 Feb 2015
It get tasks on 11, 12 and 13 Feb
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=4773816

So it was used (made contacts) ~4 days after "the fact"


The wording I see on my Computer pages is 'External IP address'
It shows my IP (of the router)
The real IP can be hidden by use of VPN/Proxy/Tor bur I doubt 'they' are smart enough (after all they used the laptop without noticing BOINC exists)

Check the IP on:
http://geoip.flagfox.net/
http://whatismyipaddress.com/
http://ipinfodb.com/

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

[quote]I got a server contact with an external IP When I googled the number it came back from Viet Nam.

Is this the "Toshiba laptop" you talk about:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=4773816

Your first Post: 9 Feb 2015
Last contact 13 Feb 2015
It get tasks on 11, 12 and 13 Feb
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/results.php?hostid=4773816

So it was used (made contacts) ~4 days after "the fact"


That is another laptop I have it is not the Toshiba: When you said this I could not believe I missed this as I look everyday. The first contact I see is Mar 1 which know looks to be a cancelation of a workunit which is the server contact I saw so not sure if it was the laptop connecting or the server informing. Thanks for clarifying the IP info and lookup links

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So this have to be the "Toshiba laptop" you talk about:
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_host_detail.php?hostid=7173371

I think that "Not started by deadline - canceled" requires that the local BOINC (on the "Toshiba laptop") is informed about the request to cancel.

Local BOINC sends some sched_request_setiathome.berkeley.edu.xml to the server (for whatever reason) - this have info for all the tasks and their state ('state' from the scope of the local BOINC).
From this sched_request the server sees the task is still not started by deadline and sends back "request to cancel" in sched_reply_setiathome.berkeley.edu.xml

But this is just my "theory" ...


If the "External IP address" is not yours (is not IP of any place (e.g. workplace, cafe, university ...) you used to connect to Internet from the "Toshiba laptop")
then it have to be IP address where somebody else used Internet from the laptop ...

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

"Not started by deadline - canceled" is done by the client automatically based on the deadline set when the task was sent. The servers then are notified of the error at the next scheduler contact. Task 3953750775 shows

Report deadline  24 Feb 2015, 22:39:12 UTC
Received         1 Mar 2015, 7:37:02 UTC

which indicates the computer didn't have internet access until that time on March 1.

                                                                   Joe

"Not started by deadline - canceled" is done by the client automatically based on the deadline set when the task was sent. The servers then are notified of the error at the next scheduler contact. Task 3953750775 shows

Report deadline  24 Feb 2015, 22:39:12 UTC
Received         1 Mar 2015, 7:37:02 UTC

which indicates the computer didn't have internet access until that time on March 1.

                                                                   Joe

Quite possibly that was the first time the computer had been booted up for a while. If the computer had been running, but simply off the net, the task would have been started and quite probably finished: then the outcome registered by the server could have been something along the lines of "Success : invalid : Reported too late to validate".