List of laptops which come pre-installed with BIOS tracking agent
absolute.com
absolute.com
Apparently, a number of manufacturers agreed to carry the code in BIOS. On a Windows PC, if you remove the disk based code, it gets restored from BIOS -- unless you jump through a few hoops to disable it that are probably beyond the ability/motivation of the indiscriminate thief or burglar.
From what I saw, there's no BIOS component in the Mac version. In that version, wipe it from the disk and it's gone.
Supposedly, you have to pay a subscription fee for the service. Some people commenting online claim they find the service running (or, at least, listed as "active" in their BIOS setups) without knowing what it is or how they got it. There is a significant "WTF, don't track me!" component to these comments.
I was curious because I had a laptop stolen that appears to match the listing of models having BIOS support. But, as I never knew about Computrace and never paid them anything, I doubt that would be of any help -- unless they are indeed tracking indiscriminately, and willing to pull my machine's records regardless of my account status or lack thereof.
I do, more generally, have reservations about a tracking feature that probably comes in BIOS regardless of whether one purchases it, and that -- per some comments at least -- may be tracking regardless of my election of same. I don't know whether to be concerned, or whether I've wandered into tin foil hat territory.
BTW, Absolute Software is/was Vancouver, BC based, FWIW.
P.S. I forgot to add that it can also remotely initiate a hard drive wipe. And if you pay a bit more (essentially insurance), they'll pay up to a grand if they can't recover your machine. (Many people may be just as well off relying on coverage they have under other insurance policies they already carry, I would guess.)
Most applications these days will have an option to report usage correlated to IP and a unique identifier. In theory, any of them could be used to track a stolen machine, however I was surprised to find something that did this come pre-installed at the BIOS level.
via swolchock in another thread: (http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=2018777)
Did some digging, and LoJack security vulnerabilities were detailed at
BlackHat 2009:
"The Computrace anti-theft system also has the capability to read Bit-locked file systems on Windows Vista."