Hacker kitten in training by blmurch

I’ve mostly put the pieces of my life (aka computer) back together since mid June, when my laptop was stolen right out of my hands. For the full account, you can read the gory details on my personal blog. In the past two years in Capital Federal, my wallet has been taken out of my backpack (which I now wear in front), my husband’s laptop was stolen in Jan 2007 in San Telmo and now this. While these are very inconvenient and horrible, we are safe and we not hurt in any of these robberies. We were lucky. Here are some tips so that our bad experiences might serve as a lesson to others- feel free to add your own experiences and tips in the comments.

Report the theft to the police. You will have to go to the local comisario where the incident took place. They are noted in your handy Guia-T map or you can look them up online.

The Embassy’s America Citizen Services tel 5777 4387 is putting together a database of thefts so they can provide the authorities info on what happens to whom where.

Back up your stuff. Get an external hard drive and back your files up. Then, get another external hard drive, or cds or dvds or whatever and back up super duper important things. This is the scary bit - my backup drive was able to survive the copying over of my data, but was dying as I did that this week. For my mac, I use a program called SuperDuper and it’s wonderful. For PC users, do internet searches to find a program that does something similar (Casper looks good). The best thing about superduper is that it makes a BOOTABLE backup drive. Meaning, you can plug it in and use it. I used to use Retrospect, but the thing about that is that the backup is in this funky format, you have to reinstall the system on a new hard-drive, then install retrospect software on the hard-drive and *then* you can see your backups. So stay away from proprietary backup systems and use ones that make bootable drives. Once you have a backup system in place backup as often as you think is important. My father backs up every day. I should have followed his protocol, but didn’t do it.

Sign up for logmein.com or some other similar service. If you have a mac and have a .mac account and are using Leopard, you can configure your computer so you can remotely log in.

Password protect your computer and even have a password to come back from sleep/screen saver. It’s annoying, but it might just be annoying enough that the thieves then cannot get to your data.

If you’re really paranoid turn on encryption on your hard-drive. There are encryption programs already installed in Macs and Windows and Linux. In a mac it’s called FileVault and on windows it’s called Encrypting File System (EFS) and there are many flavors for Linux. However, neither File Vault, nor EFS are very beefy. You can go with PGP (Pretty Good Protection) for more hefty protection if you want.

Since we’re on the topic of tips against theft…
Photocopy the contents of your wallet front and back and leave a copy at home and also offsite - with a trusted friend or family member.
Keep some money stashed on your person that is not in your wallet (or purse) so that you’re not stranded if the wallet goes missing.
Write down the phone numbers in your cell phone. I know i don’t know friend’s phone numbers because I just call their contact listing in my phone.

Personally, I hope you never have to rely on these tips, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.