FAO someone that has some web hardware present.

[TheAnimus]

I think we should start a simple FREE 'locater' service.

The idea is that when someone nicks your pc, you goto the simple add supported web page, log in, and set your PC to 'stolen' status. If anyone connects the PC in its current configuration to the net (and plenty of dumb ass people must do) we get its IP and some other config.

So needed! Someone who has good, not really fast, but reliable and international peerings and some spare capacity is wanted.

Simple really, i'll nock up a trival app that runs as a service, every time the PC is connected to the net, a Heartbeat will be sent to your webserver, containing the hash of the machine, and the interactive logged on username.

I'll get a simple response back, if its "laptop has been stolen", i'll then send a lot more information (browser history, or something similar) and every all this data including the IPs should be logged (this service will transmit some statistics too).

This isn't a profit endevor, the idea is it will be free because the impressions of the adds seen when someone registers + downloads, will pay for all the 'talkback' traffic.

If someone is intrested in this, and can help with the web end hardware, post here and i'll try and have the spy client written by monday

[moogle]

Neat idea, what do you mean web end hardware a dedi server or just a webhost.

[TheAnimus]

a web host that would coupe with such a thing been hosted without flinching.

Preferably paid for by a firm they work for who would be happy to foot a couple of GiB of transit, for some good will.

As for if its virtualised, or dedicated hardware, it really dosen't matter!

[tiggerai]

I got a RAQ3 flashed to a 550 that's sat here doing nothing...

.. shame about my bandwidth tho.

[moogle]

wouldn't take up much bw would it? what size of data would be sent back (1 mb or just a few hundred kb?). I wouldn't mind seeing some source code to try and make something like that too

[TAKTAK]

wouldn't take up much bw would it? what size of data would be sent back (1 mb or just a few hundred kb?). I wouldn't mind seeing some source code to try and make something like that too

well it would only need to be a text string so it should be fairly small.. this is a good idea tho.

[stytagm]

well it would only need to be a text string so it should be fairly small.. this is a good idea tho.

The heatbeat would be very little data, but you'd need to serve the website too, which would probably be more.

It's a good idea, let us know how you get on.

[TheAnimus]

Indeed, it would be a tiny payload in the heartbeat.

However, lots of people using tiny heartbeats can add up. Combined with no revenue stream for this, it could get quite big. However at first it obviously wouldn't.

The website itself would have adverts to pay for the bandwidth used whilst siging up for an account, activating a system as stolen.

I'll nock up the client end this Sunday if i get a round to it!

[Steve]

This is a very interesting idea.

I expect a donation system would work very well for such a site, too.

[TheAnimus]

Maybe its just i really don't believe in human kindness, but i doubt it would. I'll even put money on that.

The best bet would be to get people to view enough adds when they sign up, to pay for it to last for a while.

So anyone intrested in helping out with the web back end? Steve, don't suppose u've got some spare capacity and bandwidth, know any company that likes doing good for the geek community, that in turn for some branding would help by sparing some web hosting resources?

[Steve]

Not got an answer for you right now on that.

One thing I have thought of - if this app is going to dish out information that'll help the computer be located once it's stolen, communication with the server will need to be https, or some other way that allows the server to be identified, to avoid a man in the middle attack and somebody swanning off with your data.

[TheAnimus]

basic rolling cryptography hash should suffice.

it dosen't have to be *that* secure because the first cut will only report the clients IP.

only a second more advanced cut would report anything else, and i'm not sure if anything thats confidential is required! Would browsing history actually be helpful? Probably not.

[Workaholic]

basic rolling cryptography hash should suffice.

it dosen't have to be *that* secure because the first cut will only report the clients IP.

only a second more advanced cut would report anything else, and i'm not sure if anything thats confidential is required! Would browsing history actually be helpful? Probably not.

Browsing history might help if they use the computer for their own personal use..

[Agent]

Is there any reason why the server couldn't just be some basic cheap web-hosting?

Getting the service / application to do a POST/GET URL request should be fairly simple. The page then logs this information and sends a reply over HTTP to the application / service. The application could then be programmed to do various things based on the page contents. All of this would obviously be hidden.

The coding in ASP/PHP would be fairly minimal and the bandwidth / load on the server would be considerably less than any forum would cause.

[moogle]

Start small then expand. I too think a webhost can handle it at the start then if it gets too big for its boots then you can switch.
Don't go the ASP route.. PHP ftw!

[Steve]

Yeah, what agent said.

I got 20GB/mo transfer on my cheap hosting account, MySQL, PHP, PERL.

Only thing I can't do is configure a virtualhost, so any domain name would have to redirect to a subdomain of time.

Would be a cheap (free) way of testing the water.

Not sure what authority of signature my server can produce, either (i.e. to verify that the client is connecting to where it's meant to be connecting).