What you should do if your laptop is stolen or lost?
What you should do if your laptop is stolen or lost? It is a very sad event, when your laptop is stolen. Then, you won't be incurring a high price just to buy a new laptop; because laptop theft is such a big risk factor that it poses a threat to your digital security as far as conceivable.
Private and family photos, passwords for all your accounts on all websites, especially banking internet passwords, and your business data for example, all of these data will be in the possession of your laptop.
Read this report to learn how to prepare yourself by keeping your laptop in advance, and ways to protect your data after it falls into the hands of these thieves.
How do you prepare for the lost or stolen of your laptop?
Life is rosy in the eyes of the vast majority of us as human beings that we would never imagine that our laptop could be stolen. Unfortunately, this can happen to any of us as long as he goes out of the house with his laptop.
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It is important and necessary to take all precautions and measures that can make us in control of the security of our data. The most important thing is to take these measures as long as we have our laptop. These precautions only make laptop theft a financial loss, not informational either. Below we explain the steps you should take.
First, encrypt your laptop data
You can encrypt your internal hard drive so that no thieves can access your sensitive information such as saved passwords or credit card information - for example - even if they really open your laptop's front.
If your laptop is running on Windows platform, it is best to take a few minutes to activate and configure BitLocker encryption system settings, which will enable you to encrypt your laptop's internal disks. At the stage of setting up BitLocker you will need to create a password ,
So include uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols, and numbers in that word. It's best not to leave that word in a notebook or local blog post on your laptop. It is best to write it on an external piece of paper by hand and hide it somewhere no one knows.
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And how to activate BitLocker , open Settings from the Start menu and search within Settings for Control Panel. Inside Control Panel search for BitLocker. After the search results appear, choose Manage BitLocker and follow the instructions on the screen to complete the activation. There are a few requirements BitLocker needs to be enabled. When it is confirmed that these requirements are met, the encryption will be completed.
In the event that you are confident of encryption through a third-party intermediary, you can count on Absolute Home & Office formerly known as LoJack. This service offers many options, from encrypting your laptop's storage disk, to the ability to remotely delete the data available on the laptop.
Second: Back up your data
You should back up your data, and update it regularly so that your files are not lost forever if your internal storage drive gets corrupted or your entire laptop is stolen. There are many possible scenarios in which your important files stored on your hard drive will be corrupted or lost.
You can take a backup of your data in two ways: manual and professional. A manually drawn copy relies on you manually moving your files to a different storage media, such as an external HDD or SSD
As for the professional method, it revolves around the use of some external software specialized in making backup copies for users, including operating system files, and not just the usual files of videos and photos. There are many services that will help you in this matter, perhaps the most prominent of them are: Acronis True Image or Aomei Backupper Standard.
Third: Activate the tracking feature
On macOS laptops, there is a feature called Find My , which you can activate to trigger the geolocation device and remotely locate the stolen laptop. On Windows, this feature is called Find My Device. You can turn on this feature on Windows laptops by pressing the Start button and then selecting Settings.
When you open Settings, click on the Update & Security section, which will appear at the bottom center of the Settings window. After clicking on this section, another window will appear. Like below.
When that window appears, click on Find My Device at the bottom left. When you click on this option, another new window will appear, at the top of which you will find "Find My Device", and below it several lines explaining what this function is and how it works.
All you have to do is press the Change button. A small window will appear with the phrase "Save my device's location periodically" to "save my device's location periodically". Activate the power button to be blue as seen in the image above.
What do you do after your laptop is stolen or lost?
As mentioned above, and as you will see below, you have prepared enough for the unfortunate event of your laptop being stolen. The next steps revolve around locating your stolen laptop, then informing the institutions responsible for this matter, and then searching for the best solutions to protect your data, whatever it is.
Below we will remind you of the details about the steps of each of the aforementioned destinations.
First: Track down the location of the stolen laptop
Did you enable the laptop tracking feature in the Windows settings that we talked about above? If yes, you will be able to track down the location of your stolen laptop. Head over to this page to show all the devices linked and activated to your Microsoft account. Log in to your account by entering the email address associated with it and the correct password.
Click on the Find My Device tab at the top as in the picture, you will find a list of devices associated with your account; choose the appropriate device that has been stolen. Next, click on Find to search for it on Maps.
After clearly showing its location on Maps, you will have the option to lock to lock the device and not allow anyone else to use it until you unlock it. And in case you, reader, are wondering why the word Lock doesn't appear in the image above, hiding this option is because I searched for the device I'm already using now, so I won't be able to lock it. Which brings us to the next step?
Second: Notify the relevant institutions
Report the police immediately, go to the nearest police station. Tell them exactly what happened to you, where the theft happened, and any descriptions you might remember of who stole your laptop.
After that, the officer in charge will take your official details and your phone number to follow the developments of this matter - if any - with you. After that, ask him to get the record number of the report of that incident and a copy of the record.
Next, go directly to your bank, which the thief is supposed to try to access using your account name and password saved on your laptop browser. Report it for theft, and change the access permissions and keys with the relevant department of the bank.
Give them a copy of the police report so the matter can be documented. After that, ask the bank staff to inform you of any attempt to access your account through your stolen laptop.
If you got the stolen laptop from the organization where you work, it must be insured. Send a copy of the report to the insurance company to take the necessary measures and compensate you after mentioning the circumstances of the matter and making sure that your laptop was actually and genuinely stolen.
Third: Protect your private data
We mentioned above that there are ways to find lost devices, and we mentioned ways to activate these tracking mechanisms. So, if you are an Apple device user, you should head over to the Find My app and do a full wipe of the data on your stolen device.
In the same way, complete this command on your Windows device as we mentioned in the Microsoft interface for managing your devices associated with your Microsoft account.
If you've ever used the above-mentioned Acronis True Image or Aomei Backupper Standard services, remember that they'll be able to do it for you, too, with efficiency that will surprise you.
Fourth: Change your passwords
After your laptop is stolen, the thief will surely try to access all your accounts on all platforms whose passwords are stored previously. Set up and create completely new passwords for each account.
If you use a password manager like 1Password , LastPass , or Dashlane , delete all the passwords available in that service's interface , disassociate their trust with the device stolen from you, and change the passwords afterward.
Fifth: Disable autofill for passwords
If you are using Chrome browser, and you have saved all your passwords and accounts in the password fields, the thief will not know about this at first sight. But it will know as soon as you open the login page of which website you have an account on.
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When you open the login page, Chrome may automatically sign you in to your account on any website by itself.
Immediately head over to the three dots at the top right of your Chrome browser and click Settings. After that, click on the Passwords tab, which is concerned with saving and managing the passwords that you already have stored in your Google account on the Chrome browser.
After that you will see the Auto Sign-in option as in the image above. Deactivate this option immediately.
Sixth: Remote logout
If you're using Chrome, Firefox, or even Safari, there are options to sign out for all of your devices that you're signed in to later. Remote logout of Chrome browser, for example, may help log out of your stolen laptop. This will help reduce your data losses as much as possible.
You can complete this by managing your devices on the Apple or Google platform, selecting the stolen device, and clicking on logout remotely. Thus, when any of those logged-out devices are connected to the Internet, the log-out will be activated immediately.
When your laptop is stolen or lost, it is logical and expected to feel angry, panicked, and upset. If you act in this way, you may lose the physical value of the device, along with your other data and information available on it. It is best to think calmly and act wisely to ensure that you do not lose anything besides the monetary value of your stolen laptop.
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