What are your next steps if thieves strike?
If the worst happens and your PC, laptop, smartphone or tablet gets stolen, you might wonder what you can do. Well, how you get it back is outside the realms of advice we can reasonably give you, but what we can tell you is what to do if and when the nightmare becomes a reality. Take it from us, in case someone takes your system from you.
Change Passwords
We imagine most people already know this, but it’s always worth reiterating: if your PC gets stolen or seriously compromised, you should change your passwords immediately. Yes, it’s a hassle, but if a criminal can access your online accounts, then they could do serious damage, from spending your money to committing identity theft.
Start with your main email account: it’s the most valuable point of access for a hacker, because your other web accounts will all be linked to it. As long as it remains compromised, a person would be able to intercept any password changes and, even worse, reset them to their own. Only when your main account has been locked down should you bother changing any others.
Along similar lines, you may want to reset your security question too. It’s possible that anyone with unauthorised access to your account could learn the answer (or change the question) so they can recover access. You want to make sure your account is completely impossible to access for anyone but you.
Speed is obviously of the essence. Don’t wait until you’ve filed a police report or made it back home to change your password. As soon as you realise your PC is gone, go and do it. You should also use best practice. Anyone with your PC might have access to password lists or notes you keep, so pick something entirely new and unique to keep your accounts as secure as possible.
Sign Out Sessions
You might have changed your passwords, but that’s only the first step towards keeping your online logins from being abused. The thing is, even if you’ve changed your passwords, there will be some sites where you stay logged in. The way that system works is that an active session remains active without requiring authentication, so even after you’ve changed your password, it’s possible that your account is still logged in and accessible.
Luckily, some sites will force sessions to refresh if the password changes or if the computer’s IP address changes (i.e. it’s stolen and used somewhere else), but that doesn’t mean you can rely on that to happen. What you should do is find and forcibly log out of your existing sessions. Any good site should allow you to do this, though it might require a bit of searching.
On Gmail, for example, the option can be found by scrolling down to the bottom of your inbox, finding the link in the bottom right and clicking ‘details’ next to ‘last account activity’. Here you’ll see all the times your credentials have been used recently, and a button that logs out any active sessions other than your current one. Any other device in the world trying to access your account will now be forced to enter your password to continue – and if you’ve already changed it, they have no choice but to give up.
Notify People
As ever, if your accounts get compromised, then it’s always a good idea to notify people who might be affected. Obviously, it’s worth warning your bank or financial institutions to watch for fraud, but also put a note on your social media accounts. If people know there’s a chance they’ll receive messages from your accounts that might not be from you, they’ll be extra vigilant. They might also be able to let you know if they see you logged in at an unusual time or from an unusual place. At best, they might even be able to spot the person who took your device if they’re using it in public!
Basically, the more people who know that your computer has been taken, the lower the chance of them experiencing trouble as a result. It’s unlikely anyone who steals your PC will want to cause trouble with your life; most will just want to sell it on as quickly and discreetly as possible. But who knows where your system will end up?
Watch For Activity
Just as you should ask your friends to watch out for suspicious activity, so should you. Check when your accounts were last logged in, see if you’ve got messages marked as read that you haven’t previously see – that sort of thing.
If you’re looking for a mobile device, you might even be able to use tracking software to find it. On an iPhone or iPad, you can potentially use the ‘Find My iPhone’ feature, which can show you on a map where you system is (or last was) according to its GPS position, and allow you to control it to some extent. There’s a chance it’ll be accurate enough to show you exactly where to look (or, as in the case of one of my lost phones, it’ll turn up in Ethiopia three months later, then switched off forever).
On Android devices, the same feature is called ‘Android Device Manager’, and while most laptops and PCs don’t have any similar feature by default, if you think it’s likely to be a problem, you can install a program like LoJack (www.lojack.com) to get a similarly useful positional tracker out of it.
Restore From Your Backups
Er, you have been keeping backups, right? Backups are a tricky subject. No one does them as often or as thoroughly as they should, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them at all. And most of the time, people only realise that after they’ve experienced the sort of event where backups would be a lot of help.
So we get it. They’re boring to do and you’ll probably never need them. If you feel that way, why not split the difference? Instead of making regular backups, pay money for a Dropbox (or other cloud service subscription) and just make sure that your important documents are always saved in those folders. You barely have to do any work, and your files will always be accessible even in the event of a serious theft (or hardware crash or, for that matter, a natural disaster).
Really, backups are the one thing you need to worry about if your PC gets stolen Hardware, no matter how expensive, can ultimately be replaced and programs re-downloaded. What’s valuable – what’s important – are the documents, photos, memories and information stored on it. And it’s well within your power to keep those safe, so don’t regret not doing it after the fact.