Lately several people I follow on twitter have had their laptops or smart phones stolen recently.  Usually this means they will not see them again. But there are steps you can take to make life more difficult for the thieves.  It may also help you get the device back.

The first thing to do is notify the police and give them as much information as possiable.  Give them the serial number and mac address.

Serial number. – Usually on the outside of your device.

Find your MAC address.  A MAC address is a unique identifier for each of your network cards.  Every network card; whether wired or wireless has a unique mac address. It is a series of six numbers separated by a colon.  Finding your mac address is different depending on device and operating system.  Wikihow has a great summary of how to find it for each different device.

Use recovery services such as “Find My Iphone” to track, wipe and shut down your device if stolen.

Recently a new service has been launched by the Canadian Wirless Telecommunications Association called ProtectYourData.ca This site allows you to see if a phone is on a blacklist with the major carriers in Canada  This should hopefully make it more difficult for thieves to sell these devices on if they are unusable.