Stony Brook University is beautiful in the summertime. Soft breezes rustle the leaves of the trees near Roth Quad. Sunshine warms the faces of students reading texts on benches outside the Melville Library. The scent of rose, lily and honeysuckle permeates colorful garden landscapes surrounding the Union.
There are fewer individuals milling about the grounds. Students are off doing summer internships or working summer jobs. Faculty travels abroad to conduct research. Staff members engage in professional development by traveling to other cities to attend conferences and workshops. Fewer eyes are on the lookout.
You don’t often hear about crime at Stony Brook. It’s a relatively safe campus year round, but it feels especially safe and secure during the summer months. It is natural to let your guard down in this easy-going, airy environment.
Thieves are counting on you to do just that.
Client Support has been made aware of several laptop thefts on campus in recent weeks.
So, as a reminder:
- Do not leave your laptop unattended, especially in public spaces like the library or Student Activities Center.
- Make sure you lock the doors to your room or office if you need to step away from your machine.
- Try not to leave your laptop out in the open. Keep it out of sight, in a drawer or a cabinet.
- Think about buying a lock for your laptop. Seawolves MarketPlace sells several in the range of $25 - $42.
- Be careful about leaving important data on the computer. It is always a good idea to back up your data in other places anyway, but in this case, you do not want sensitive information getting in the hands of the wrong person.
- If you see something, say something. Call Stony Brook University Police (631) 632-3333 to report a stolen laptop. You can dial 911 from any campus phone.
I always find it amazing the little care/thought for the safety of laptops from damage and theft and the amount of effort it takes for data recreation as well as the concepts of data and identity theft with the theft of a laptop.
Laptops are easy sources of liquid cash - easily carried away , portable and easily sold as a desirable, valuable item.
Many laptops (including many legitimate purchases) are sold for cash with few documented.
A laptop can be stolen in a flash or less. People will spend big money on a laptop and yet shirk at a $40 security cable to make it more difficult for theft. It is also a good idea to mark down serial numbers - who knows for the small chance of police recovery of your writings on your laptop/notebook computer.
Clearly these thieves are in the wrong place. I think you should have added the students should have back up copies of assignments and notes whenever they can.Coz sometimes these thieves want more than the laptops they also sometimes want assignments and notes which there are too lazy to write. Sad but true.
Good point, Safari. This summer, we were given the opportunity to speak to incoming students and their parents at Orientation. We have been emphasizing the importance of data backup. We encourage students to use their SB Drive (now known as MySBfiles), the 500 MB of network storage and web space allotted each Stony Brook student, faculty and staff member. This is a great place for them to save copies of assignments and notes. We also encourage them to buy a USB key (flash drive, thumb drive, etc.) as another place to save and back up their work. The portability of this device makes it easy for our students, especially our commuter students, to work in multiple locations. We have even heard of students emailing themselves copies of their classnotes/papers as another means of backing up and storing their data. Some people use external hard drives, and some still burn to CDs. Another thing we have learned more about since I first wrote this post is Computrace LoJack for Laptops software. If you have LoJack installed on your machine (cost is $49.99 for one year and $99.99 for three years) and your laptop is stolen, you file a police report and notify the LoJack Recovery Team. When the stolen machine gets connected to the Internet, your computer will silently and securely contact the LoJack Monitoring Center. It is placed on high alert and the Recovery Team gets to work tracking your computer’s location. The Recovery Team provides law enforcement with tracking information and documentation essential for procuring search warrants. We had some parents inquire about LoJack at our Orientation sessions. It’s another option out there. Anyway…thanks for visiting our blog and contributing, Safari.
The STOP theft deterrence and recovery system will be at Stonybrook on 9/4/07 to display their laptop and portable electronic theft deterence system. It is a highly unique system used by Harvard, Yale. MIT and over 100 schools. It is an ideal way to protect your gear on campus.
Some good crime prevention advice, stay safe and look after your kit.
Even if you have left your laptop and it’s stolen you can track it now a days with latest GPS technology. There are GPS stick devices and you could really search for other tracking devices as well.
You cannot protect your laptops or anything if you are not watching them!!
yeah, my laptop was stolen a while back, just
google some good cables/locks, its worth it
Hey, anything to reduce identity theft on campus is a good idea. There are too many people who would like to get their hands on personal data that doesn’t belong to them. They don’t particularly care about what damage it does to someone else, either.
Take it from me, I wasn’t able to complete an apartment rental because my former roommate was using my credit to go to town on a credit card I had no idea he had applied for.
yea many thieves moving around i lost my 3 mobiles with in a year.
I had my laptop stolen by someone I know. It was “returned” to me after they realized my entire life was on there, all of my business stuff, etc. They had it for 3 weeks.
What’s funny is, I didn’t know who had stolen/returned it until I got it back. They were stupid enough to leave history/temp files, cookies, etc. on there and were even still logged into forums they used.
Needless to say I have one less friend…
Travel Nursing
It takes one simple mistake and your laptops gone, theives are looking for these products everywhere, easy money.
security is key, good idea to safeguard your laptop.
Nothin worse than having a $2000 laptop stolen.
Aaaarghh !!
Regards
Information is the key to making easy cash
It sounds just like here in germany, seems to be the same everywhere.
My laptop got stolen out of my car on thursday. I’m super lucky that I backed everything up a couple of weeks ago, and that they did not see my $3000 camera that I had very close to it. I’m doing some research on tracers for the Dell i ordered last night. It seems like some of the microsoft software blocks the tracing ability. Anyone know of something that works 100% of the time?
It would be great if microsoft could have a service where the computer would be totally shut down once it was stolen. I have had 2 laptops stolen and it is a terrible experience!
I cried when my laptop was stolen last year. i took me a couple of weeks to re-construct everything….
Yes i am agree with this. But as my experience. When i have forget where is my key and asked to a store where i have buy it, they have charge me $15. lolz
but anyway, you have talent to share some info here. Nice blog and nice writing.
Thanks
~Thomas
you just gotta be careful
i recently just had my macbook stolen when i left it for literally 30 seconds.
A friend of mine had her laptop stolen the other day and she was hysterical.
You don’t realise just how much you rely on computers these days until it’s gone.
Sometines crimes happen when we least expect it. Studies show that most crimes are crimes of opportunity. Where the opportunity exist, people will take it. Not even low crime areas are immune to this.
yeah..
its horrible w/o computers these days..
you just need to be more careful..
regards,
http://healthybee.org
This is a good list for laptop security anywhere. I always lock my office when I have my computer their when I’m gone. The lock is a good idea also how about using a usb hd for sensitive information so it’s not located on your direct hd thats always on the move.
yes, if you put something of value in front of anyone it seems these days w/o proper care, it will disappear…
the important thing is save your valueable data to storage such external hard disk or thumdrive.
cheers.
So, prevention is better than cure rule applies here too. Don’t you think installing some security cameras in campus premises would at least create some fear among those thieves?
Hello I agree with you.
I gotta agree with everything you say. I may be a bit biased but a notebook computer lock is definitely the way to go. If you kill the opportunity to snatch a laptop on the run your gadget and your data are already a lot more safer.
One thing student’s could use with a relatively ease to protect data would be a program called True Crypt.. Its on the fly PGP encryption software that is free.
Just ensure you’re using a long password(alphanumeric & special chars. Preferably something not in the dictionary.. But easy enough so you don’t have to write it down)
I mean that will help stop a data leak.. Won’t stop a theft.