About a year a half a little GPL laptop tracker was born. It was called Prey and it didn’t even work in Windows. Six months later, the Control Panel was launched, and some weeks later the first mobile client appeared. During this time, more than 800 commits from around about 20 developers were made, and there’s already support for all major OS’s, while new ones are on their way.

We’ve received some good attention on the media and nearly two million reports have already been gathered and sent to the Control Panel. The number of registered devices nearly tripled in the last five months, passing the 100.000 mark, and we’ve already needed to upgrade our servers exactly seven times. It’s really been a hell-of-a-ride and we’re more than amazed with the way things have unfolded.

Today we’re giving a new step towards making Prey not only better but also bigger.

We’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time, and we finally realized that you guys were right. There should be an easy way to track more than three devices with Prey. Yes, it’s time to get serious and to do things right. We’re launching today Pro accounts for the Control Panel, not only to help us cover the server costs an to invest in more infrastructure, but to insure a continuous development flow in order to keep making Prey what we all want. That is:

An open, free, robust, featureful and easy to use tracking solution for everyone.

In a few words

If you want to track 10, 20 50 or even a hundred devices using the Control Panel you can now upgrade to a Pro account and do so, forgetting about the three device limit. You’ll also get access to some cool features that will help you keep better track on your stuff, such as the new Active Mode.

The pricing model

We thought about this for quite a while. Initially we planned to charge a fixed fee for each additional device, so that you we’re billed for the exact amount of devices you needed. But after doing some maths we realized that this would end up being much more expensive in the long run, specially for the ones in need to track, say, a hundred devices.

Secondly, we figured that this would mean you’d need to log in and confirm your order each very time you wanted to add a new device. Too much hassle for no good reason.

So, we finally realized that a subscription model was the best way to go. You choose the size that fits best and simply pay as you go, avoiding costly upfront fees and remaining free to go whenever you want. We built different plans according to different sizes, dropping the price-per-device ratio as the amounts increase. The figure is quite simple and it looks like this.

We also included a 10% discount for yearly payments and optional discount codes for non profits and educational institutions. If you feel you’re eligible for one of them feel free to contact us. You probably will.

And basically that’s it. Once you set up your subscription you can freely install Prey on more devices and they will magically pop up under your account.

Now let’s head for the good stuff!

Hardware scanning

Prey 0.4 bundles a new core module called System, which as of today lets you to fetch your Mac or PC’s hardware information remotely from the Control Panel. This is specially useful for those cases in which your PC is recovered by the police, as they usually request your device’s Serial Number in order to verify that it actually belongs to you.

But that’s not all.

It turns out that not every time a PC is stolen in its entirety. Sometimes only a part of it is — mainly RAM — and actually these kind of thefts seem to be quite common.

To address this, we designed the hardware scan feature in a way in which you can know whenever something is modified since the last scan was performed. It’s really quite simple and you’ll get the hang of it in a minute. You just need to click on “Request new hardware scan” and Prey will perform a new scan and update your device’s information accordingly, and let you know immediately if something’s changed.

Currently the system module works in all PC OS’s (Mac, Linux, Windows) and you can see, it gathers the PC’s Serial Number, UUID, BIOS vendor and version, CPU model and speed (in MHz), and finally, the number of installed RAM modules and their total amount (in MBs).

And by the way, this feature applies to all Control Panel users, not only to Pro accounts. The only difference is that Pro accounts let you make it play even better thanks to…

Prey Active Mode

As the name implies, Pro accounts allows managing Prey’s behaviour in a different way. Normally it’s up to you to mark your PC as missing or trigger actions on it. In other words, Prey behaves in a passive way as it sits silently awaiting your command.

Active mode means Prey will also keep you informed on what’s happening with your stuff, and there’s two main ways in which this works. The first one is that the Control Panel will display the last time each of your devices “checked in”, and thus, make you aware of which of them are powered up and connected to the net and which of them are not.

The second way is, yes, you guessed right: hardware scanning.

As Active mode keeps better control on what’s happening with your PC’s, by setting the hardware scan feature Prey will automatically perform a daily scan on the device to check if something’s changed. This means you don’t need to request a new hardware scan by hand: Active mode will automatically take care of this for you.

Sounds good, right?

If you want to try it just create a new subscription and you’ll be set, since by default all Pro account devices work in Active mode. That’s it!

Ultra-fast frequency for reports and actions

Normally you can set the interval for Prey executions up to five minutes (which is quite fast, actually), but you never know when the moment will come and the points is to respond as quick as you can. That’s why Pro accounts will get an option to increase the interval up to two minutes. Click and boom, Prey spreads its wings.

Automated deployment

This is a really important issue, specially for the ones in need to track large amounts of PCs. We’ve been tweaking a lot the way Prey is set up, and we can now provide a way to deploy Prey automatically in multiple devices, without needing to mingle with the settings one by one.

In a few days we’ll be releasing a new set of installers (yes, we’re switching to PackageMaker in Mac) ready and tested for automated deployments, and we’ll put all the necessary documentation on the FAQ in order to get you going.

Revamped Control Panel

This is not really a feature and it applies to all users, not only the ones with Pro accounts. As you can see, the Prey website has been redesigned and so has the Control Panel. We made some major updates (and some small ones too) to make it even easier to track your devices with Prey. The changelog isn’t precisely “brief” so we decided to list what’s new on a separate post which you can read over here.

Hope you like it!

Looking forward

To be truthful, initially we (or I, should I say) never expected to get something in return for Prey (i.e. money), because the whole point was to have a free, open way to track your laptop. And though all the requests we received made us consider the Pro account option, it finally came down to what was necessary to keep the project moving forward, which is a) development hours, b) server resources and c) yes, bandwidth.

It took us a while, but we finally came to the conclusion that a stable income source would not only let us invest in better infrastructure, but also get more people involved in the project. And that means keeping in on track, and keep it growing steadily.

So, to put it in other words, Pro accounts are not only good news for you, but they’re also good news for us. Donations helped us a lot at the beginning, but nowadays we’re spending much more that what we’re getting out of them. We hope this will change things for good, so if you want to help us the best way is to upgrade to Pro account (and don’t forget to tell us how you like the new stuff we’ve been brewing!).

It’s been only a year a half but we’ve already made huge progress, and now I think the future looks brighter than ever. So thanks everyone for your support, for the constant feedback, for the bug reports, for everything.

Prey is more alive than ever and that’s only thanks to you. And I mean it.

It’s been over a year since we launched the Control Panel and it was about time we made some changes. During the past months we’ve been noticing which things work and which needed to be looked at, thanks to the constant feedback we’ve received from you guys.

So, first of all, thanks everyone!

Here’s a brief list of changes we’ve made to the Prey Control Panel, which hopefully will make it easier for you to manage Prey and keep an eye on what’s going on with your stuff.

Here we go.

To the left, not to the right

This is probably the first thing you’ll notice when visiting the new version of the Panel. We used to align everything to the right — honestly, out of no reason in particular — and though it looked good, that didn’t necessarily mean it also worked good. We were constantly battling with alignments, keeping stuff into position and, you know, trying to make the thing look not-so-awful in IE.

So we decided to turn things around and follow the logical way of reading, which makes it work a bit better while also keeping the structure more in place.

New grid view

This is a cool new feature. You can now watch your devices in grid mode in addition to the traditional list, which not only lets you capture them all in a glance, but also allows you to filter and sort them either by their status or their names, among other things.

This feature is currently disabled for Internet Explorer as the rendering speed is really lousy (sorry guys) and we still need to figure out how to make it work better. Everyone else will enjoy it, as it works really good.

Tabs for keeping better tabs

First of all, we separated the different sections of the device management page into tabs, so you can find much faster what you’re looking for. We also renamed the “Update” button to “Save changes” as it makes much more sense, and we also added a second one at the top so you don’t need to scroll the whole way down to apply your new settings.

SSL support, at last

As promised, all forms which handle passwords on the Control Panel are processed through SSL (e.g. login, signup, profile). So, having that the signups from the installers are now also handled through SSL, this means your user info will never again fly in the wild. This makes us much more comfortable when logging in and out of the Panel and probably you will, too.

No more language switching

Yes, it’s gone. We finally seemed to catch the inglorious bugstard that was causing the Control Panel to randomly switch to a different language without your request — although it was quite a funny bug in our opinion, hehe. The Control Panel will now also check your browser’s HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE header so in most cases your language will be automatically selected if there’s a localization available.

From our tests the bug is no longer there, but please let us know if you see any funny behaviour again.

Different colours for buttons

Small one but important nevertheless. Some of you told us sometimes you’d accidentally remove a device when you actually wanted to add a new one, because of the fact all the buttons were orange. Well, not any more.

And that’s about it! Next time you log in you’ll see all these changes (hit Ctrl+R to reload the files in case it looks weird), and you’ll also notice small differences here and there that hopefully will make your life easier.

We hope you like the new look of Prey’s Control Panel and hope it works for you as it works for us. Happy hunting!

• Screenshot grabber in Windows was replaced by preyshot.exe, a lighter version which is based on this code.
• The System Service in Windows now actually runs as the SYSTEM user, and calls programs as the logged in user only when needed (such as for taking the screenshot).
• Patching logic for auto-updates is now more fail-safe. Hopefully this will fix the issues we’ve been seeing on the mailing list. Another important change is that auto-update only will work if the device is not marked as missing.
• New Ifconfig.exe binary for Windows, which allows getting always the right Private and Gateway IP addresses, either if your Windows version is in english or not.
• Creating a new account through the Linux configurator should have problems dealing with strange characters in the password.

You can check the full list of commits over here.

That’s all. Happy hunting!

Hello everyone!

The latest and greatest of Prey is packed and ready to go. Codenamed “Solid Snake”, version 0.4 features two new modules, a lot of fixes and enhancements and some important code optimizations. If you wish to know how to update you can scroll to the bottom. Otherwise lets cut to the chase and see what’s new!

Windows System Service

Because you asked for it. Now Prey can run in Windows not only as the current logged in user but also as a System Service, which makes it much harder to remove. This is the setting by default for new installations, but can easily be changed with one click. Users who auto updated and want to switch must open up Prey Config and select “Run as System Service” under the Options for Execution panel.

New Mac installer

We’d seen the current Mac installer was having some trouble with odd passwords so we decided to take matters into hands. We rewrote the whole thing in native Cocoa + ObjectiveC so not only there won’t be any more issues with passwords (hopefully) but also it’ll look and work much nicer. Good one Carlos!

New configurator for Linux

No more keys to mingle with in Linux as well! This was something we still owed the Linux community. Written in PyGTK so it integrates nicely with the GNOME desktop. Additionally, when installing the Debian/Ubuntu package Prey will check if there was a previous installation, and if so it will copy your configuration so you don’t have to set it up twice.

SSL support

At last! All account setup though the installers is now done via SSL, so there will be no more passwords flying openly in the wild. We still need to “SSLize” the password log in for the Control Panel itself, but it’s on our top 10 priority list so be sure that it’ll be done in the forthcoming weeks.

New Lock and Secure modules

As we promised, Prey now has a way to remotely remove any stored passwords either in your keychains or your browser cookies, and can additionally hide your profile data from Outlook and Thunderbird if you wish to prevent unauthorized access to your emails and contacts. This module is called Secure and you can find it under the Action Modules list.

The second module we’re releasing today is a rad new one called Lock. As the name implies, it lets you lock down your computer from being used unless a specific password is entered. How does it work? Simple: if you activate the module, your computer will show an unremovable/oncloseable/unhideable/always-on-top/fullscreen black window which won’t let the user do a thing until the password is entered (or the module deactivated).

It looks like this:

Both modules work in Mac, Windows and Linux — Android users will have to wait a bit! — and from our tests they work real good. Check them out, although we advice you to be extreme careful with the first one as it can do real damage!

By the way, a huge applause to Mark (a.k.a MKHCB on the mailing list) which wrote most of the stuff for the Windows version of the Lock module, and inspired us to write the Linux and Mac versions to provide multiplatform support.

Asynchronous actions (important!)

We realized there was no good reason why actions should be bound to reports, so we decided to separate them. If you’re using Prey with the Control Panel, actions now are run regardless if the device is marked as missing or not — if it is, they will be triggered right after the report is delivered. In other words, be careful not to enable an action module by mistake as it will be activated even if the device is not missing!

Oh, and just to make sure you don’t get any unexpected behavior from Prey, we batch-deactivated all currently enabled action modules so your PC won’t start screaming if you had left the alarm module on.

The reason why this doesn’t apply to non Control Panel users is that the current way of activating modules in Standalone mode doesn’t allow us to differ between report and action modules. In other words, in Standalone mode, modules are still run only when Prey gets the “404 Not Found” response.

Additional changes and fixes

• Geo module should now work in all XP systems, thanks to Premik’s excellent contribution.
• Much better parsing method in Linux’s geo module. The bug that made it fail on some Linux systems is now also gone.
• Webcam module in Linux now takes two pictures (and uses the last one) so the camera can adjust better to the lighting conditions on the room. Pictures look a lot better!
• Debian package install in Linux now detects if there was a previous config and copies all data so you don’t have to resetup your PC.
• SFTP transfer method for Standalone mode (Thanks Birdtori!)
• Alarm module in Mac sets the volume to the highest level before sounding the siren.
• A whole lot of optimizations, some of them that specially made Mac go a bit crazy sometimes (good one Carlos!).
• New Curl bundled in Windows systems (version 7.20) which includes SSL support for setting up new accounts.
• Additional custom options for Curl requests (such as using HTTP 1.0 instead of HTTP 1.1 for passing through proxies) through a new $curl_options parameter.
• Lots of fixes here and there for modules (e.g. uptime in Windows if service wasn’t started, netstat for Macs, etc).
• Better auto connect routine for Macs, this should fix Snow Leopard issues.
• Better: OS detection logic, logging management, auto update checks, handling of processes.

How to update

There’s two ways to update to the new version. You can simply download the new package and run it, or you can also log into your Control Panel account and select the Auto Update feature for your PC’s. In this case, however, we suggest you run Prey in Check Mode afterwards to see if everything worked out smoothly (it should show “Version 0.4″). From our tests the Auto update works real solid, but you never know!

And that’s about it! If you’re interested you can look at the full commit list or simply browse the code itself. As always, we’d love to know what you think of the new features so drop us a line any time though the mailing list.

Thanks everyone for the feedback, and happy hunting!

Did you know we’re one of the 25 finalist startups that were chosen to present at The Next Web 2010 conference in Europe? Hell we are! Thanks to an invitation from our good friends at Maestros del Web, we were able to get a spot on the main stage at this year’s event in Amsterdam.

We’re very excited to be here and meet new people, and let everyone know about Prey. Holland is great and the mood is awesome, and we’re looking forward to know what Queensday is all about. We’ve been hearing amazing stories!

Just a little info on the event

TheNextWeb.com is Europe’s #1 resource for innovative Internet Start-up news. With over 600,000 monthly visitors (data: Sept 2009) who view 900,000 pages and an average of 10 new articles a day. No website inspires more Internet Entrepreneurs and customers than TheNextWeb.com.

Some quotes from earlier conference atendees:

• “What sets the The Next Web apart is a focus on the internet as a key driver for a global market. Their international view is unique, making their blogs a must read and their conferences a must attend for professionals like me who do business around the globe”
  – Werner Vogels, Amazon
• “Best audience in the world. Tall, beautiful and very smart” – Andrew Keen
• “I met more interesting companies than at any other such event” – Robert Schrimpff, TVM-Capital

Big news ahead

We’re actually going to announce a couple of things on Thursday, so stay tuned for news! You can follow the event on Twitter by using the #tnw hashtag, or watch the live coverage at http://now.thenextweb.com/.

We hope to do well on our presentation, and send us your support if you can!

Original picture by Borya.

Did you notice the little birdie at the top left? Hehe.

Now, as good as the geo functionality may sound, it’s not just a new module we’re releasing today. We’re talking about a completely revamped, rewritten, retweaked, restructured, reoptimized version of Prey. Not only did we take care of a lot of bugs and feature requests we’ve received, but we also packed in a whole new set of stuff that makes us really proud of this new release.

Geo… how?

Okay, basically what the new geo module does is — having that your computer has a Wifi card installed — it scans the area for existing Wifi hotspots, and then attempts to obtain a geo fix using Google’s Location API, pretty much the same way Gears and Latitude positions you on a map. This means you don’t actually need to have access to any of those hotspots, your computer just needs to detect them. And boom!

To try it just install the new version, log into your Control Panel account and activate the geo module for your device. That’s it! When set to missing, your computer will report its location in addition to everything else.

Forget about updates, for real

Remember Prey previously supported auto-updating of modules? Well, one of the biggest new features is a full-fledged updater for Prey as a whole, including its core, binary files, whatever’s in there. This means that hopefully (in case you want to use that feature) this will be the last version you’ll need to come and grab here, and to install by hand. From now on you can just toggle the Auto Update checkbox on your device page and Prey will take care of the rest.

Important to note is that this option is disabled by default, not only because it’s a new feature but we want you (now and always) to be in control, and not touch anything unless you ask us to.

No more keys to mingle with

Another big update is that from now on, Mac and Windows users won’t need to copy and paste the dreadful API and Device keys from the Control Panel in order to set up Prey. Just enter your login credentials (if you’ve already signed up for a Control Panel account) or your user information (in case you haven’t) and the installer will take care of everything.

Well, here is the complete list of changes (or the most important, at least) for this new release of Prey, version 0.3.7.

All platforms

• New Geo module for geolocating PCs using wifi hotspots as reference.
• Double check for network connection, in case the network blocks ICMP (ping) requests.
• Hidden temp folder for better cloaking when Prey is woken up.
• A lot of code optimizations, better handling of functions and variables, less filesystem access.
• Fewer requests for communicating with Control Panel.
• Split core into smaller chunks; better structure in general.
• Added hooks for asynchronous job support for modules.
• Updated email client to version 1.56.
• Better logging of actions and responses, to make debugging easier.
• Enhanced security for Control Panel, clients now get a unique one-time URL for posting reports, to avoid eventual device spoofing.
• Added updater so you don’t need to reinstall the core files for each release (to use you must enable “Auto update” for your device on the Control Panel).
• Optimized parsing of traces. They are also now handled with URL encoding.
• Email’s from Standalone mode are better formatted, and they don’t include the previous header message any more.

Mac

• Using now LaunchDaemon for running Prey, no more Cron. (Good one Diego!)
• Better installer, no more API or Device keys needed.
• Installer checks for previous configuration and restores it on installation after verifying the keys.
• No more “Darwin” references, now straightly “Mac”.

Windows

• Easy Guest account set up through configurator for password-enabled systems.
• New configurator, no more API or Device keys needed.
• Wifi autoconnect finally! A huge thanks to Pablo Poo for this one.
• Can now set delay easily through Configurator, as well as managing other features.
• Delay is now handled in the Windows registry.
• Custom installation path support (you can now install Prey on C:\HarmlessLittleProgram or whatever you like).
• New routes for platform-specific stuff (cron.exe, prey-config.exe, etc).
• Better handling of security permissions (ACLs).

Module updates

• Session: Better uptime output in Windows.
• Alert: Support for text-to-speech in Linux (requires festival or espeak installed).
• Alert: Now shouts the message only upon request. Disabled by default.
• Session: Get current logged in user
• Network: Get gateway IP as well.
• Webcam: Better quality of pictures in Windows.

That’s it! We’ve also made small usability enhancements to the Control Panel, such as making the latest reports easier to find, and also better management of system paths for the Session module.

New Terms of Service

You may have noticed that the Signup form now includes a link to a Terms of Service page. This is something we were missing and is really important (and frankly, better for everyone, for you and for us). These Terms cover only the use of the Control Panel as a service, as the Standalone mode doesn’t require you to use the web application.

Now, the Terms as an agreement isn’t done between you and me but rather between you and my company, Fork Ltd., as obviously I cannot risk getting into trouble directly as a person. This also means that now Prey as a project is officially backed up by Fork, which also means that we as a company are now commited to make this thing keep rolling on for good. Hopefully in time we will be able to redirect some resources towards having a better server infrastructure and getting more developers involved, but for now it’s just a technical issue, and we wanted you to be the first to know.

Anything else?

Yes indeed. We want to make it easier for developers to dig in Prey’s code and to push their own modules, so we want to tell you we’re now putting our hands on providing better documentation for hacking Prey and building new modules. We’re also launching (finally) the translation management platform we’ve been working on for a while.

If you have any questions, feedback, as always, let us know. Hope you like this new release, and happy hunting!

Why mobiles

Simple: because you asked for it! It was also the natural next step, considering that we already have Prey running on Windows, Apples, and penguins as well.

Why Android

Because we think it’s a good place to start. Google’s platform looks very promising (amazing phones are available and even more are on the way), the documentation is quite good, and they have helped us all along with the development — we were lucky enough to get one of the Magic’s they gave out last year!

What it does

Basically, Prey for Android works the same way as it does in Portables and Desktops. The only difference is that there’s no standalone mode (yet), and the activation is not done via the Control Panel, but by sending an SMS to your phone with any message you want. By default this is “GO PREY” but you can (and should) put something else that will keep your friends from pulling jokes on you.

The good thing is that Android phones are geo capable, which means that we don’t need to try to grab a picture of the thief, we can just fetch the exact current location using the phones GPS or by using GSM triangulation. And it works!

So basically, when installing the app, you can attach it to your current Prey account (if you have one) or you can easily create a new one from the phone. Then you set up the SMS messages for activation/deactivation and, whenever the time comes, you just send an SMS message from another phone to yours and the reports will start coming in.

If you then want to disable Prey, you can do so by sending another SMS (by default, “STOP PREY”, which you can also change), or by unsetting the missing status on the Control Panel. That’s it.

What’s the catch

None! As the Windows, Linux and Mac versions, Prey for Android is free as in free beer. Our goal is to have a complete tracking solution for all your different devices, so that you have a centralized location in which you can monitor not only your computers but your gadgets as well, phones, cameras, microwave ovens, who knows. This is just getting started!

How do I get it

You can scan the QR below, follow the link on the image above, or just look for it in the Android Market. You can find it by searching for “Prey” or browsing the Applications > Tools menu.

What’s next

Exactly what’s on your mind: other mobile platforms. We’ve already started playing around and hopefully we’ll have another one rather sooner than later. Right now we want to focus in making the Android version work smooth as silk, and see what response we get from our users. So go on, try the application out, and let us know if you experience any issues. While you’re at it, you can always take the time to give it a couple of stars too! :)

If you have any questions, as always, feel free to ask in the mailing list. Happy hunting!

This time it’s the Control Panel’s turn. We’ve heard all of your requests and that’s why we decided to take a while and polish all the rough edges, to add new features and thus make it easier for you to manage Prey and track your computers for when the time comes.

‘Nuff said. Let’s start from, well, from the beginning, shall we?

1. Forgot/reset my password

Having trouble remembering your password? Fear no more!

2. OK/Unverified devices

This looks like the normal welcome page of the Control Panel, right? Well, look again closely. You’ll notice that the second device reads “Unverified” below its title. That’s because we added states for devices, which will make it easier for you (and us) to know when a device is properly set up or not.

Basically, when you add a new device in your Control Panel, it will default to an “unverified” state, which won’t allow marking the device as missing until the link is actually verified. Whenever the server gets a request from the device (meaning it was correctly configured) it will switch to “ok” and then you’ll be able to activate Prey. This way you won’t have to test the configuration by trying to activate Prey: the Control Panel will simply tell you if it is!

3. Module fine-tuning + new Alarm module

Yup, that’s right. Now you can fine-tune the different modules by changing each of their settings directly in the Control Panel, not having to edit the config files by hand in your computer.

if you look closely your eyes will tell you that there’s another module in there, and you can believe them alright. We just added an Alarm module which allows you to trigger a loud sound on the computer for 30 seconds, which may help you find your computer if it is located nearby. We advice you, though: be careful with this one!

4. Better reports, brighter pictures too

Reports now render all the information — we like to call them traces — collected on the computer. This means you should now see, depending on the active modules, the internal (private) IP address of the missing device, its MAC address, its current uptime, the list of active connections, and so and so on.

This is not noticeable on a first look but it surely is important. Now the Control Panel post-processes dark images so you’ll have a better chance of knowing who’s behind your computer if the picture is taken at night or in a dark room.

5. IE support

We’re not that fond of IE — to be truthful, we have bad dreams about it –, but since we’ve gotten a lot of requests to have better support for IE, we decided to hack our CSS and make it look good better on Microsoft’s browser.

For now the official supported version is IE7 (IE6 people it’s time to upgrade!), but IE8 should render just fine. Any comments please let us know on the mailing list.

There’s also been some minor interface improvements here and there, which will make the site look a bit slicker on others browsers too.

6. New translation system

We also worked out a new system for managing translations in an easier way. This will allow to make translations available faster, thanks to the work of the amazing people who have offered their help. We’re very excited to have this finally out, since there’s a lot of different languages on the way!

By the way, to everyone who have contacted us regarding translations, sorry for taking so long but we’re finally ready!

7. Bigger, bolder server

Yes, Prey has lived only for a couple of months on its current home, but it was already time to make room for more growth. In fact, just today we passed the 200.000 report mark! You shouldn’t have noticed the change (everything was done real smooth), but if you experienced any glitches during the migration process please let us know so we can handle it better next time.

That’s all for now. Hope you enjoy the updates on the Control Panel. As always, suggestions are most welcome, and as always, thanks everyone for the help and the constant feedback. More news to come soon!

After a lot of testing we’re glad to announce a new release of Prey, version 0.3.3, which will hopefully fix all the problems some Windows users were having with the reports in the Control Panel. There have been lots of changes (just look at the number of commits!), but the most important changes are:

Base (all platforms)

• Added option to toggle the autoconnect feature (yes, we heard you). Disabled by default.
• Changed default missing state code for activating Prey from 200 to 404. Added as a configuration option too. You can read more about this over here (must read if you’re using Prey in standalone mode!).
• Users can run Prey in test mode to see if everything is set up correctly, –test in Windows, -t in Mac/Linux (it won’t send any data to the control panel, just runs the complete loop of activated modules).
• Message boxes from alert module now don’t hold Prey from doing its job.
• Added custom User Agent so we have more information to avoid spoofing, and we actually know from which version we’re getting the request.

Windows

• Not using the buggy Task Scheduler system for running Prey any more. (Yes, we REALLY heard you) :)
• Now using our own cron.exe program, with real-time execution delay updating and built-in logging (called with “–log”).
• Deprecated prey.bat, not needed with the new cron.exe.
• Replaced webcam_capture with better (and open) snapshot.exe alternative. A huge thanks to Elliot Saba!
• Added check if Prey is currently installed to Installer.
• Added check to run Installer/Configurator only as an admin user.
• Added verification of keys by syncronizing Prey with the Control Panel after configuring them.
• Verified permissions on files so that Prey can be run as a normal user as well as an admin.
• Polished a bit the Installer and Configurator graphically.

Linux

• Alert module now inserts user’s email automatically in the wallpaper with Imagemagick. Thanks Rodrigo Linfati!
• Better checking if user is root or not for modules.
• Added traceroute to email report.

Mac

• Fixed bug with password encryption for standalone users. Once again, thanks Diego. :)

As you can see, most of the stuff has to do with the Windows version of Prey, since we saw it was giving lots of trouble specially in Vista. Hopefully all the problems regarding the reports or the webcam capturing will be solved, so we can focus on other stuff now. If you have any trouble with this version please let us know, and if you don’t… please let us know too!

I would also like to thank everyone who helped us out with this new version, specially Newstart (a.k.a. MKH), Michael Smith, Rodrigo Linfati, and everyone on the transation team. You rock people!

This may look like a radical decision (and maybe it is), but there’s a couple of good reasons why we did this:

Semanticality

The word exists, right? Hehe.

Well, the point is actually quite simple. It doesn’t make much sense that a “200 OK” response should mean that the computer has disappeared. Rather, it does make much more sense getting it from a “404 Not Found” response. This may sound kind of unimportant and geeky, but making Prey more “semantic-ish” makes it much easier to understand from the developer’s perspective, and more consistent by using a standard and worldwide-known protocol like the HTTP codes.

The good thing about this is that by synchronizing Prey status codes with HTTP codes will allow us to make better use of them, being that there are lots of standard HTTP codes that seem to be of really good use for us, such as 302 Found, 403 Forbidden, 409 Conflict, and so on.

Scalability

This is perhaps the most important reason of all. As the number of Control Panel users continues to grow, so does our need to handle the server load better. Having a “404 Not Found” message previously meant we allowed the request to get through to the application, and thus, having the application handle the request rather that the web server. We actually managed to cache almost 100% of the requests from Prey, but this small change makes it much simpler for us, in hopes to make maintenance and updating in the future easier.

Memorability

That’s right. Until now, if you were using Prey in standalone mode it was up to you to remember the correct URL you’d be using later to activate Prey. So basically doing it the other way around makes it easier to handle, since the file/URL is already there and you just need to find it and delete it.

And boom, that’s it.

Now, the good thing about this is that Control Panel users don’t have to worry about anything, since the handling of the HTTP codes has been taken care of. So basically each version of Prey will get its correct response from the Control Panel, in order for the software to behave as it should.

Standalone users, on the other end, will need to generate the check URL they had previously defined in order to wake up Prey only when requested. We’ve also added the possibilty to change the missing_status_code in Prey’s config file from 404 back to 200 so you can revert things back to the way they were. Although we must say it’s probably not a good idea, since you’ll have to mingle with the config file each time you update the software.

Any thoughts or opinions? Feel free to tell us in our mailing list.