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Security for the Sake of Marketing December 9, 2008

Posted by Tim in : Technology , 1 comment so far

Wow. I just got my latest eWeek today and read about something I actually hadn’t heard about yet. Apparently there is a new technology that Lenovo is putting into their laptops that allows a user to disable a stolen laptop by sending a text message. Now don’t get me wrong…I’m all about new technology and text messaging and everything else. But are you freaking kidding me? That is the dumbest damn idea I’ve heard in awhile.

You know why this upsets me? Because people are going to buy the laptops that include this feature and think, “Well, if anything happens, I can just send a text message…I don’t need to worry about security anymore.” Ugh. I want a show of hands…how many of you have ever gotten a text message days after the person sent it to you? And even if that hasn’t happened…how many times have you wondered if the person you sent a message to actually got the message?

This technology is reliant on the fact that the stolen laptop is actually in an area that can receive the SMS message. It’s also reliant on the fact that there are absolutely no glitches in the SMS system in general. No, that’s normally not a problem, but I don’t know about you, I think I’ll not trust my laptop to it. Not to mention the who-knows-how-many-hours between when the laptop is stolen and when you realize it and send the kill command.

Now, if this is used as a belt and suspenders kind of thing, fine. Go right ahead and send your text message. Like I said, though, I have a feeling people will use it as just the belt or just the suspenders and ignore the other. Is it better than nothing at all? Sure, I suppose it is. But I still don’t think it’s a substitution for good old-fashioned hard drive encryption.

Awhile back, I talked about how I use TrueCrypt to encrypt the entire contents of my hard drive. If I lose my laptop, I could certainly send a text message and wonder if it was received. Or…I could do nothing and still know that no person on Earth is going to get my data because it’s encrypted with a password that has more possible combinations than there are atoms in the known universe. But I guess that doesn’t sound as sexy in a newspaper ad.

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