It was 29th december, 07:00 am, another day like many. I went out of my room and went to my desk. There was no notebook.

Me: Honey, did you use my notebook last night?
Wife: WHAT?!
Me: Where’s my notebook?
Wife: OMFG, I take a look at the kids at 05:00 am, saw some clothes and other things spread all over the living room floor. I thought it was you but… but… WE WERE ROBBED!!
Me: F**K, my boss is going to kill me…

Yeah, that was how that day began. So, LET’S USE PREY!

2 days later, the first report arrived. Nice, the guy was on Facebook, so I got his name. After a couple of hours, some calls to friends and other contacts, I got name, ID, address, wife’s name and ID, and a lot of images.

Went to the police with this and they HAD to wait the order to investigate (from the prosecutor).

20 long days after (today), police called me for “… some advances in the case. We need you here right now”.

There was my notebook, my camera, and my ext HDD.
And the best of all, ALL MY DOCUMENTS, INFORMATION, WORK, PHOTOS, ETC!

Thanks PREY!

The macbook was stolen from a friends house, with a pc (without prey installed), and a Blackberry so we thought we would never see them again. Then I remembered about the program and marked it as missing. I received the first report like 2 days later. I knew who the person was because of the screenshot (She was on Facebook) and started to investigate on my own.

Finally I got all the information I needed, so I went to the police and they recovered my MacBook. We´re still waiting for the other stuff. Thanks Prey! You saved me!

My flat door was kicked through during a burglary in mid-December. Police believed they were disturbed as all that was missing was my laptop and camera.
I activated Prey as soon as I noticed and despite the police officer saying that it was unlikely that my items would be recovered I was hopeful.

The next day I got an email from Apple’s “Find My Mac” service saying that my device had been located and shortly after received my first report from Prey.
I contacted the police and passed on the information, within an hour they dispatched a team to the house, made an arrest and recovered my items which we returned a few days later.

They also arrested another offender in connection with the break-in who had previously been arrested for burglary.

I’m really thankful for the team at Prey who helped my get my stuff back and keep these criminals off the streets. I’ve since promoted the program to friends and family, and even had an interview that appeared on local news to promote tracking software – on itv.com

I just want to say another massive thank you to Prey and keep up the good work!

On May 26, 2011, I got a Skype call from my bride of 26 years calling from our home in Paraguay where she spends every summer. From the tone of her voice, I immediately knew something was wrong. She was in tears. I immediately thought that someone in the family was ill, hurt or worse.

She explained that a well-dressed man carrying a portfolio knocked on our door and told the maid that la Señora had asked him to repair a computer in our home. My bride was out running errands that morning. The maid let him in. Our nephew, who lives in our home was woken up by this guy rustling through the house. Our nephew came downstairs to investigate, and saw this guy dashing out of our house with my Bride’s Mac Book Air, a fully loaded laptop computer that I had given her for her trip to South America. That morning, my bride had called the police and filed a report. But the police told her that there was not much they could do with so little information.

Six months earlier, our son sent me a link he had seen on Reddit of an open-source free software application call Prey Project that helps you track down your missing computer or smart phone. In less than 24 hours after I has identified on the web site that her laptop had been stolen, I received an email from our missing laptop that included a photo of the guy that has our laptop. As soon as the computer found an internet connection, the web cam took a picture. It also sent me screenshots of our guy’s email account and Facebook page where we were able to see more information about this guy, his friends, and his profile. It also sent the physical location of the laptop shown on a Google map. It turns out that Google has a geo-location database of IP addresses for Wi-Fi and other internet connections all over this planet. So we knew within 100 meters where this guy lived. This guy also used his full name as his SSID on his Wi-Fi, so with that information within minutes I was able to determine that he had gone to the University of Miami, we found his Facebook account and confirmed the web cam picture with that on his Facebook page. I also found his LinkedIn account and confirmed that he had a business in the US.

With this new information, My bride called the police back. They were blown away by how much information we had on the guy. They had never seen anything like that and were checking in with us daily to get more information we might be able to get. With the guy’s name they were able to confirm the web cam photo with the photo they had on file of the national ID all Paraguayans carry. But his ID card had expired so the address was not current. Nevertheless, with the geo-location information we provided the police were able to triangulate on the house by checking with neighbors. The police arrived at the house to talk with the guy several times, but he was never around.

To get a better understanding of how the software worked I identified another laptop at home as stolen. When I opened up the laptop, I was frightened by the loud sound of a police siren as if it were in my living room, I saw the web cam flash quickly and a computer voice shouting at me saying “this computer has been stolen. Please contact (my email address) to resolve this issue”. The same message was spelled out on the screen of the laptop. Within a minute I had an email report with a picture of me with alarmed looked as if my hair was standing on end. I was also able to confirm the accuracy of the geo-location. It was less than a block from our home in Houston. Very impressive considering there isn’t any GPS on the laptop.

Two days later, on a Saturday I got a call from the attorney representing the guy with the laptop stating that his client just wanted to return it. I’m sure he was motivated by all the heat from the police calling on his home, the sounds of police siren’s in his living room, and the fact that he knew we knew so much about him considering how quickly the police were able to descend on his home, and how much that could impact his business in Miami and livelihood in the US.

I gave the attorney my bride’s local Paraguayan cell phone to return the computer. My bride and the attorney were talking within minutes after his call to me. My bride didn’t want to merely take back the computer because the whole case was under police investigation. The police also cautioned her about dealing with the culprit directly. So, my bride informed the police of the contact, and that following Monday, the attorney returned the computer with the police involved. We don’t know what happened after that; whether they were able to pursue the original thief. We were told our guy bought the computer from someone else, so it had exchanged hands from the thief to this guy in less than 24 hours.

On Monday I got a final report from Prey Project with a picture of my bride as she had opened up the laptop on the patio of our home in Paraguay. The triangulation was within a block of our home.

I’m a policeman and so is my nephew. He came with the story about what happened that morning during his duty. A man and woman reported themselves to the police and said that their phone was stolen during shopping by a pickpocker. The man had a laptop with him and said he knew where the phone was by GPS. Police didn’t know how it worked but believed the man and let him step in the policecar. Within a half an hour the police could stop the car with 4 foreigners AND the phone.

All 4 where arrested and more stolen goods where found in the car. Since i heard that story i put it on my phone also. Thanks.

I was in the bus and I lost my phone. So I sent a sms to activate Prey. I tried calling it many times and the person that had it turned it off. But when she replaced the SIM card, Prey sent the new number to my other phone. I called the new phone number and “she” told me I should call back in 20 minutes and after that I didn’t have contact with her again. She turned off her phone too.

So with just her phone number I made a search and I found her address and her home phone number too.
I called her home phone number and I said if she doesn’t give back my cell phone I would call the police. So she gave my phone in the bakery near my house. Prey is Fantastic.

I lost/mislaid my phone back in October, and after a frantic half hour calling it and worrying where I might have lost it, I remembered that Prey was installed, so jumped onto my laptop and reported it missing.

Within moments, it came up as being over the fence in my neighbours house, which didn’t make any sense at all. I zoomed in more on Google map and it looked like it was on the fence line between our two back gardens, so I went to investigate from my side of the fence.

The map location showed it to be somewhere either in my chicken pen or over the other side of the fence, so once again I called the phone and to my amazement I could hear it ringing, it was buried under a box of lettuce leaves that I had thrown in for the chickens, and my phone must have fallen out of my pocket and in with the chook food. Luckily it hadn’t been there long, so a quick wipe over and it was good as new, and restoring it back to working order via prey was about as easy as reporting it missing.

I have told all my friends, and they too were impressed, thanks to all at Prey