Meet on the ledge
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Rewards are offered for lost laptops
LOST LAPTOP, a new UK service hopes to add a bit of consolation to losers of sensitive laptops, or does it?
No more will those having misplaced their precious notebook have to rely on the police force to kick in doors and harrass the underclass in the search for a missing unit, instead you can sign up to use the service and pay someone to give it back to you.
"The inspiration behind the need for Lost Laptop came about when I managed to get a laptop I found back to its rightful owner. It actually belonged to personal friend but the distress and anxiety felt over losing personal information like photos or bank details had me thinking about how to incentivise people to hand in laptops," explained John King, founder and CEO, Lost Laptop Limited.
Found laptops are listed on the site and Lost Laptop promises rewards of "up to £3,000", depending on model, condition and existing data on the drive. The reward is essentially the money that the loser is prepared to hand over for the return of their machine, less a commission cut. A Lost Laptop spokeswoman could not say what this cut was but a dig on the site suggests it is £250. To be honest we were not actually sure of the legality of such an operation anyway.
Scarily, the site seems to allow access to files found on the units, we saw one in Bristol with personal files named Motor show and Recipes, something that might alarm users with more sensitive naming conventions. Worse than this, we were able to dig deeper into the machines, reading a CV on one and some information on location-based services, before stumbling into some 'nudge nudge' holiday snaps on another. Currently the site has some 100 lost laptops listed from across Europe. You might want to check whether yours is one of them.
We put in calls to the UK information Commissioners Office, some lawyers and Lost Laptop itself to clarify the legality of all this, but what do you know, it has gone five and apparently for a lot of people that counts as a good day's work.
Who knows what is going on? As an idea it's so strange that on first and second glance it appears to be a joke, or a marketing ploy. Few marketing ploys are so brazen as to post apparently personal topless photos in their ads though.
You are a savvy bunch, let us know what you think.
More to follow in the morning. µ
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Well, Vru in Russian means "I lie" "I tell a lie"
Anyway, this is sooo illigal as receving stollen good. oh w8 that's what they are doing...
The fact that they have 'private data' up on display makes this seem like an exercise in scaring people into shelling out cash for something. Perhaps it's viral marketing for drive encryption or a real laptop security service. If it is real I would have thought that the whole 'I'll buy lost/stolen goods for cheap then sell them back to the owner at commission' thing is a touch illegal.
www.truecrypt.com, works great, free (make a donation good for everyone).
Laptops are usally worth a lot less than the information on it, encrypt it and get a little peace of mind.
http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/d7f6cc9e616908cb036b32c94ed659a7/compdetails
Previous Names:
Date of change Previous Name
23/10/2009 V.R.U. LIMITED
Ok, they have changed their name recently. What did VRU Limited do?
http://www.linkedin.com/companies/vru-entertainment-pvt.-ltd._2 says:
"FILM MAKING
DOCUMENTARIES
TV SERIALS
ADs
EVENTS n MORE...."
i would hazard a quess that all the files are dummies, maybe from the marketing staff..
finding a laptop with a living allowance (lebens lauf?) application in german, in the laptop that was found in london, does not strike me as likely, ok, i know i'm simplifying things but it's just my 1/50th of a dollar..
There's one laptop that is said to be found in Pori Finland. I looked at the text files (PDF) on the laptop and did some googling. I checked only three files and those were copies of posts on three blogs in Blogspot. Furthermore, they claim that they have found the computer in August. How come one of the blog entries was not published until November? (The entry was a review of Kent's album that came out in November.)
Yet another reason to make sure that your lapstops are encrypted.
At least then if your laptop is "lost" and handed in to these people all your data isnt open to the public.
it is illegal to profit from crime in the uk. the website is breaking the law, the sellers of the data are breaking it twice.
in some ways it could be seen as blackmail as well. "pay £xxxx for your data or you'll never see it again". replace "data" with "daughter" and see how leniantly you are treated.
If this was to ensure maximum control of the desktop, without considering the loss of fracture, R is, how the size of the device is lost,''I was in a hurry this morning, ' The data connection is very. My laptop was in prison are instructed Kuenti
drashek
A not so elaborate form of fencing to me.
I am thinking about getting a self-destruct device attached to my desktop in case it got 'lost' and found, but I'm not in hurry, because it's way to big and heavy to get 'lost'.
I'm just glad I don't have a laptop, because that would be too embarrasing if that got 'lost' and found.
I've heard about finders fee before, but making that a business is just a bit too shady.. and the way they handle 'privacy'.. is this even legal?