Stolen laptop/new laptop and wireless connection q's.

[longers]

As per title, three things really.

I had my house turned over yesterday and my laptop nicked. It's password protected but I'm after advice on how I can reduce any risk of theft/fraud if or once they can log on. I don't know what if anything they could do with any of my details, saved info from bookmarks and cookies or what I can do to protect against anything.

Sometime I'll be hoping to get a new laptop and am after any recommendations for one of those please. I surf and store music and photo's and that's about all really. If insurance pays out on full replacement value I think there'd be five or six hundred quid to play with if I've remembered correctly.

Next one, I'll have no idea about how to connect the new laptop to my wireless connection, it was locked or whatever it's called. Any ideas on how to do this or get around having to do it please?

You'll not be teaching me to suck eggs as I'm an IT numpty.

Many thanks!

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Sorry I haven't got any IT advice as I'm completely useless but what a friggin' bummer of a start to the year for you longers - I hope things get better for you mate, try and keep your chin up!

 

[Crackle]

Jeez Longers, is it your turn to get the bad luck!

Go on to all your usual sites and change all your passwords. If you have a bank/credit card logged on any sites, remove it and add a different one. If you can't do that, cancel it.

Personal data, there's not much you can do about but they will probably format the hard drive anyway unless they are spcifically trawling for details such as above.

 

[Crackle]

Nearly forgot the router: Presumably you have a passkey set up. If you tell the computer to search for wireless networks (do you know how to do this?) It should discover yours, you click connect and it will ask you for the passkey. If you don't know the passkey, you'll need to attach to the router to change it all but one thing at a time.

 

[fossyant]

Nightmare.

What Crackle says. Hopefully you'll know the network name when you search for wireless connections - if not, it will usually be the one with the best signal if you are near the router. If you don't know the code, have a quick check under the router, as often these get set up like that (most of my folks routers are set up like this).

If not, let us know the type of router. Get hold of a network cable and plug laptop straight into the router.

For netgear routers you usually type in 192.168.0.1 (or similar) and the user will be administrator, and password - password. Most folk leave this like that on a home network as there is no way to get in other than a wire. Once in, you can find the code from the wireless settings.

Once you know the codes, the laptop will sort the rest. The tricky bit is finding the codes.

 

[ian turner]

It may be mac code locked as well

 

[longers]

Cheers all, some good advice there I can follow.

Think I was lucky with the burglary as there was no unnecessary mess or unpleasantness, just smash and grab.
The feckers did nick my duvet though.

 

[fossyant]

Duvet - how odd.

 

[spen666]

Duvet - how odd.

Not really, will have used it to either carry items off in, or if using a vehicle to cover/ protect stolen items

 

[delport]

The person who stole it may have wiped the lot with a fresh install of an operating system to try and hide their tracks.
Even try and resell the laptop to some unsuspecting buyer.

You mention it was password protected?What part was password protected?
The bios?
Windows itself?
Or something else?

Regarding wireless you may mean it was an encrypted connection where you needed to enter a wep key to gain access, once done you could use wireless any time at home without entering the wep key again.
If you are with BT for example this isn't so difficult to redo again.

Many laptops now come with wireless adaptors built in, chances are the driver for that will be installed when you put the cd in the drive when first setting up windows the way you want it.

cookies contain some information, but to my knowledge they don't contain quite enough info for someone to start raiding your bank account for example.
Could someone enter an amazon or ebay account with cookie info only , not sure, i wouldn't have thought so.
You may well have asked firefox or something similar to remember your passwords for logging onto specific sites?If that was the case the person would be able to use those sites acting as you, which is why a password change is a good idea.

As another poster has suggested change all your passwords, may'be even before you get that new laptop, just to be on the safe side.

 

[longers]

If you don't know the code, have a quick check under the router, as often these get set up like that (most of my folks routers are set up like this).

Bingo! Very easy to do. Chuffed!

Thanks all.

 

[ColinJ]

Bingo! Very easy to do. Chuffed!

Thanks all.

Ah, there you are!

We were talking about you on today's forum ride and saying that we hadn't seen much of you on CycleChat recently. We thought perhaps you hadn't got a replacement computer yet.

It's nice to have you back!

 

[Bman]

Ouch. Just saw this thread.

As above: Change all important passwords and maybe think about cancelling your card details.

Its better than having to mess about with fraud and the like.

Good to see that you seem to be back up and running though