MacTrak – Recover and Track your stolen Mac

My Mac is my life. It contains gigabytes of music, movies, photos and other precious data that I’d never want to loose, or find out that it’s in the wrong hands. MacTrak from GadgetTrak is a simple application that hopes to reunite you with Mac if it ever gets stolen, through the use of WiFi triangulation and positioning technology, email, Flickr and by the use of the built-in iSight camera.

There’s a small handful of applications that claim to offer the services to track your Mac’s whereabouts and send a few pictures in an email to help you identify and track down the culprit. However, MacTrak has a little trick up it’s sleeve, through it’s smart use of the online photo sharing site Flickr – but more on that feature later.

GadgetTrak was a breeze to install, you simply need to enter in your email details, including outgoing mail server, and link  GadgetTrak to your Flickr account. The PDF Install Guide has details of some of the popular mail providers settings, if your settings aren’t there – don’t worry, all these settings are available freely from your mail provider. If you’re also someone who has mail accounts linked with Apple Mail, Entourage, Thunderbird or a similar application on your Mac, GadgetTrak recommends you use a free web mail service, such as Gmail so nobody can access or intercept the email sent by the service.

GadgetTrak installs itself as a Preference Pane is System Preferences, and all of its settings are protected by your Mac OSX Password. From there you’ll be able to change your mail settings, as well as re-link and authenticate your Flickr account, should the need arise.

If your Mac is ever stolen, all you need to do is go to a designated website, enter in your email address, password and license code and activate tracking. From then, every 30 minutes you’ll receive an email containing a photo captured by the iSight camera, as well as positioning data. You’ll also recieve an email every time your Mac is booted

GadgetTrak uses SkyHook Wireless, the same triangulation service used by the iPhone, it’s able to calculate the exact position, within around 10-20 meters.GadgetTrak includes information such as the logged-in user, it’s IP Address in the Area, nearby WiFi Networks as well as it’s longitude and latitude – which can then be viewed on a Google Map. You can see an example here.

So, onto the use of Flickr… what exactly does MacTraker with your Flickr account? Well, it uploads the exact same picture as well as all the information contained within the email and creates a Wanted Poster right on your Flickr account – for the whole world to see. From there, you can send the link onto friends or relatives who may know of the whereabouts. You’ll also be able to use that information to give directly to the the Police. An example of the Flickr image can be viewed here.

According to FBI statistics, lost or stolen laptops have a recovery rate of just 3%. However, when an application like GadgetTrak is used, that number increases to 85%! GadgetTrak also promise to refund the purchase the price of its software if your Mac laptop can’t be recovered. MacTrak sells for $24.95 for a 1 year license, or $59.95 for a 3 year license and can be purchased from the GadgetTrak Website. MacTrak is compatible with Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) and Mac OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

GadgetTrak also sells services for PC’s, iPod’s, iPhone’s, Blackberry’s and other USB devices. They also sell Lost & Found tags that you can stick to any of your goods, and in the event that they do become lost, a good Samaritan can visit the website on the sticker and get in contact with you. To find out more and purchase, these GadgetTrak products, please take a look at the GadgetTrak Website. All-in-all, MacTrak is definitely worth the purchase for that extra piece of mind. It’s reasonably priced, easy to use and simple to set-up, and could even re-unite you with your stolen Mac.