Stolen Laptop

On Sep 6, 7:39*am, --riverman wrote:
OK, not fishing for any sympathy, but some strategies.

Some f**ker let themselves into my house Friday night and made off
with my laptop, SWMBOs jewelry, some cash I had stashed (apparently
not so well) and a few odds and ends. I'm not too worried about most
of the stuff, except SWMBOs jewelry has a lot of sentimental value.

But my laptop worries me. The desktop is unlocked, so they have access
to all my content.

I don't have any passwords written in black and white anywhere, but
there are hints hidden in findable places. Also, my tax info is in
there (in a desktop folder called 'taxes') with a ton of my personal
info. Also, who knows what someone with the wherewithal to snoop in a
folder called 'financial' might decide to try to figure out.

So I'm suddenly a bit worried about identity theft, as well as (to a
much lesser degree) someone getting access to my accounts. I have
already changed all my passwords, but I still worry about what else
might be in there.

Anyone got any good ideas of how to trace a missing computer? Or who
to notify to prevent identity theft before it happens? This is a first
for me, so I'm looking for valuable insights....

Could you send your computer a nasty worm? or something of that
nature.

Dave

SOP for most crooks is to replace the hard drive if they can't get
into it (that's why I keep mine encrypted). Without something like
full disc encryption, I would be seriously looking at fraud alerts and
changing ALL of your passwords, and then changing them again. Be
alert for "password change alerts" from your ISP/email provider.
Frank Reid