Being still in early stages, we had thought that this new service would start off slowly but things have been quite different: we’ve already passed the 1000 user mark! Best of all, it seems to be working really good and it keeps to grow steadily, so we’re very pleased with how things are working out. So big thanks to everyone.

Now, as you may imagine, the control panel does get some load (after all it’s being constantly hit by requests from Prey in devices all over the world), so we decided to take some precautionary measures to reduce the server load, and make sure it keeps up and running as a rock. Most of the stuff you won’t even notice (it’s mainly got to do with caching), but there’s one which you will, and that is that devices will hold a maximum of 10 reports from now on.

Basically nothing happens until you reach your 10-report limit. But if you do, new reports that arrive will “push” the old ones out, deleting the oldest records as well as their associated files.

Being a free service, we simply cannot offer an unlimited amount of record-keeping for devices and certainly not unlimited storage (for your screenshots and webcam snapshots). In fact, with how things are going we’ll probably have to upgrade soon to a bigger server! Anyway, we think that 10 reports is a good number, and probably more than enough to keep track of your computer (heck, probably with just two or three reports you’d be able to catch the guy!).

We’ve also received some requests to raise the maximum number of registered devices on the control panel, but for the same reasons as above we’ll have to say no for the moment. Now, what we are indeed figuring out is whether or not to enable some kind of premium (payed) accounts, that allow registering more devices on the control panel (and perhaps access to more features). We still haven’t made out our minds on this, so we would love to hear your opinions to have a better view of things (through the mailing list please!).

Anyway, you must know that if we do enable premium accounts, we will still (always!) have free accounts for everyone (with a limit, but free as in beer). And of course, needless to say, Prey will be open source software for the rest of eternity. That, you don’t have to worry about.

It’s been some exciting weeks since the release of Prey 0.3. We’ve received a ton of feedback and new ideas, and more developers are joining the team and making contributions to make Prey even better.

0.3 was actually a big change in Prey as a software, since a lot of new code came in, so (as expected) a few bugs popped up. Thankfully with your help we’ve already squashed most of them, and that’s we quickly rolled out a new version. 0.3.1 fixes bugs in all three operating systems, the biggest of them being:

• Mac OS: The installer bug and the path issue that prevented Prey from being run as root. Smaller stuff too.
• Linux: Fixed installer.sh and check for Prey currently being run, that also had some problems in some distributions.
• Windows: Fixed the screenshot grabbing, webcam capturing, and the sed.exe issue that prevented Prey from sending the report.

Prey 0.3.1 for Windows also includes a 64 bit version of Curl, which was the only thing that was keeping it from running on 64 bit versions of Windows. So yes, Prey has now full 64 bit support (and thanks Kevin for the inmense help)!

We’ve also seen some systems have some problems running Prey as a Scheduled Task (some antivirus programs simply disable the service), so we decided to look for a different solution and are currently working on in. Prey 0.3.2 will include a new way of running Prey in Windows that will avoid using Task Scheduler, so that you don’t have to tweak settings by hand to get Prey up and running (you can check the FAQ for more information).

We’re also aware of issues with the wifi autoconnect feature in some Mac and Linux systems, and that will definitely get looked at as well. We also have some cool ideas for new features so we’ll probably be releasing new modules as we test them.

As always, thanks everyone for the help, for the retweeting (yes, we do have a Twitter account) and for the support. Happy hunting!