Laptop stolen; Logmein installed; I see it come online occasionally -- what can I do to track it down??

As u told that the person is using firefox and u want to know his ip address to track him.
I think it is possible but it need a little trick as if u able to set the home page of firefox to
http://www.whatismyip.com/

So how to set ur firefox home page to  http://www.whatismyip.com/ so when he open firefox the default page that open is http://www.whatismyip.com/ and u will able to see its wan ip.

All u need to just replace the file prefs.js in firefox profile that is in my case (XP)
C:\Documents and Settings\abc\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\udd3vpml.default

copy this file from ur stolen laptop to ur pc (prefs.js) and open it with wordpad and copy this line at the end and save it and again copy this modified file back to ur stolen pc
user_pref("browser.startup.homepage", "http://www.whatismyip.com/");
so when the person open the firefox the default home will open that is
http://www.whatismyip.com/ na du will able to see his wan ip

Hope this helpfull

As u mentioned
I CAN use the File Manager and manipulate files on the computer without him knowing, though, so that would be my preferred route.    

a. I know he uses Firefox, so I copied over his Firefox profile files today (C:\Users\(yourname)\Appdata\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles), hoping I could grab his PWs.  But the files were blank -- I guess he doesn't have Firefox set up to store passwords.  


The trick i mentioned is almost same. u need to just manipulate a single file through file manager.
But if u have a camera that can detect motion u can set it towards it and it will record every moment on the stolen pc.

Let hope that u get ur laptop back.

Note:But i am also happy that today i learn some think new.

You actually have a lot of options - just out of interest, is it a mac, or a laptop with a built in camera? Did you have antivirus software / firewall / anti malware / other security software installed?

A couple of things you want to configure first, to ensure you don't raise attention.

Connect to your laptop via logmein, so you get the home screen, but don't go as far as the remote control option.

Go to preferences, the remote control settings, and ensure all visible and audible notifications are unchecked, and that all options to ask the users permissions are also unchecked, except 'Do not require authorisation if user is not present' which should be checked.

Also ensure, 'automatiically disable wallpaper' is unchecked, and all security options are unchecked.

Click 'Apply'.

Next, you already have the IP address of the laptop at its current location - go back to the LogMeIn home screen (https://secure.logmein.com/computers.asp), and next to your laptop, click 'Edit'.

The IP address will be listed.

Now from here you have lots of choices... the simplest maybe to purchase a LogMeIn IT Reach license (which you can assign on the subscription tab, from the edit screen above) - this will in effect upgrade the functionality of what you can do on the remote machine without having to remote control the console...

To get an idea, watch this, https://secure.logmein.com/welcome/quickclips/ITReach/, and jump to 'unattended access'.

Let me know what you think... with full control on the system you can capture anything on the system, and anything entered into the system... if the laptop is using WiFi, it may be possible to locate the device based on WiFi access points in the physical location :)

you can change the options on the logmein to blank the screen before you remote into the laptop, and then remote in and install a client like lojack.

alternatively, you can upgrade your account from free to pro, and then push the lojack software (after you blank the screen) to the laptop in question.

While the screen is blank you should be able to run some forensics and get their email address, and that is more likely to yield a name.

Ok, you have access to the file system. Create a file IPaddress.bat or something. Upload the wget.exe (you will have to go download this from a site) file to your laptop (same directory as the .bat file). Paste the following code in it. This will give you the public IP address of the laptop.

If you want a remote connection to a command prompt let me know. That can be done using Netcat. You can also think about installing a keystroke logger and that will capture all of his keystrokes (including username and passwords to everything).

wget -qO  http://www.whatismyip.org >> ipaddress.txt

                                              

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