Prey is an open source application that will help you track and find your device, let it be your Ubuntu powered laptop or Android smartphone, if it ever gets stolen. Ofcourse the person who stole the device will have to boot and connect it to the internet somehow for Prey to work.
What is Prey?
Prey is an open source application that sends data regarding the current location of your missing device. The latest version of the application has the capability to even take pictures using the device's inbuilt webcam and send it to you upon request.
- When your device goes missing and someone boots it, Prey will try to send the the geographical location data of your device using either Wi-Fi(which can be set to 'connect automatically') or direct Ethernet connection.
- Prey can also send screenshots of desktop, statistics on applications that are currently running in the device and can even send you a picture of the person sitting in-front of the laptop using the inbuilt webcam.
- Prey is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android.
- Package for Prey available in the default Ubuntu 11.04 repositories is outdated. The latest version is Prey 0.5.3 and it is available as a DEB package.
- In Ubuntu, simply double click the package to install it(ignore warnings). Once Prey is successfully installed, you will see the following notification.
- Done. Installation of Prey in Ubuntu is completed. Now open Prey Configurator. Simple search for 'prey' in Unity dash.
- That's it. Prey Configurator will take you through the steps needed for setting up Prey in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.
- At the end of it, you will have to create an account with preyproject.com and you will see you device detected automatically. Whenever you change the 'current status' of your device to 'missing', Prey will try to send the aforementioned data to you.