Stolen Laptop, Hardrive, tomtom one etc can they get anytthing off them?

Lady_K

Daughters a student nurse in student house and she has been broken into. She cant sleep properly at the house and has been doing 14.5 hour shifts so she came home for the night to get some sleep. Her friend rang her at 4am to tell her the house had been burgled, no one was in at the time. They smashed the front door in then smashed each door to 3 of the rooms occupied out of 4, they have taken everything important to her. Shes not insured

Her friend went to the house and could see through my daighters smashed door and sees her laptop gone and external hardrive, both have all her work and backups on the hardrive for the past 2 years and 3 years uni study before that shes lost it all shes devastated, losing the work is a massive thing to her and we didnt know how to set up webspace.

I am worried in case they can scan the computer in anyway to get information from it like passwords or bank details. All her photos are on there and they of course have taken her lovely canon digital camera from a drawer at the side of her bed. They have also taken her tomtom one that she had for christmas last year and getting to placements in places she does not know she will miss that. I brought it her last year for christmas as she had a car accident and I was worried about her can we stop them from using that anyway?. She did not have a passcode to get into the computer so they can get access to everything on both hardrive and laptop

Any help would be appreciated

They have taken other stuff but we cant tell properly yet as shes still at home as the police will nit let them into the rooms until they have sent finger printers in etc

IvanOpinion

Sorry to hear this. It is devestating when this sort of thing happens. The good news is that it is more than likely the person will have a rummage around the data and then simply delete it all. The bad news is that if she has stored bank details etc. in an unencrypted format (and I consider the password protection on the likes of Excel/Word etc. as unencrypted since they can be broken in a few minutes) then the person could get hold of them. I am however inclined to think that such a theft was for the hardware and not the data. It would be worthwhile her contacting her bank and credit card companies to inform them of this though.


Can I suggest a few things when she gets set back up again
1. Keep all data in Truecrypt data partitions (make them no more than 4.5Gb in size and they can be easily backed up onto DVD). This is free software that will protect any data from prying eyesand once installed it is virtually invisible to the user. Also consider axcrypt for encryption at file level (again the software is free)
2. Keep a backup of all data away from your main computer. This is good advice because many people take backups and keep them beside the computer which is not much benefit in the case of fire etc.
3. Get insurance

Ivan

amcluesent

The TomTom will be sold on and used, no way to stop that.

Bank info depends on whether passwords etc. were kept on the disk or only keyed into a secure (SSL) web-site. If the later, they won't have been kept on disk but I'd still change everything.

Re. losing work, could you put the word out that no questions would be asked if the external hard disk was returned?

>They smashed the front door in then smashed each door to 3 of the rooms occupied out of 4<

Even if you are not insured, can everyone who has been burgled get legal advice (CAB?) on whether the hospital(?) has failed in its duty of care for the student nurses and sue the NHS Trust? (Compo culture I know, but why should immigrants get everything!)

Blacksheep1979

Tbh I wouldn't overly worry its probably some junkie that did it and it'll be sold to his dealer or down the pub for a few quid. Its highly unlikely to have been robbed on purpose for the data on it and its highly doubtful that whoever stole it will have any sort of technical expertise.

matty_c608

Never assume the data is too safe though!

Change everything you can now!

Lady_K

ivanopinion

Thankyou, I don't think she stored passwords on the laptop she just logged into halifax website to check her account so hopefully it will be ok but I'll ask her to change the details anyway

Once she is set up again we will look into that truecrypt and axcrypt I just wish wed have done something before sadly

Amcluesent

This is private accomodation so the NHS Trust wont have any dealings with it. And yes I also thought of putting an advert in the paper or whatever to even at least send the data to her somehow even over the net but I doubt very much they will do anything for fear of getting caught but its worth a try

Shes just very upset at the moment as she has to have a laptop to do her work which she has a lot of and isnt in a position to replace it. When she moved in the lad in there already said they had never been burgled and there was always someone in the house so she didnt need insurance being a student she couldnt really afford it so didnt get any

Lady_K

Is storing stuff in places like google ok for the future?

If so do we have to be referred to get an account?

amcluesent

>Is storing stuff...<

Have a look at the on-line backup services (review here)

I use Mozy and got everything back after a hard disk crash.

matty_c608

Thing is....

Uploding masses of data is a pain (ie. my 160GB full drive). Perhaps a select folder with priority stuff would be good, but I think that's about it!

UK Broadband connections are just so useless upload wise!

superscaper

Has she definitely not got any insurance. When I was a student, as long as I locked my room door, I was covered by my parents' home insurance. May be worth checking with your insurance company.

Lady_K

Thanx everyone,

I'm only covered for buildings as I am dissabled and I'm at home just about all the time so the risk of break in isnt too high and money is tight so I had to leave it. I dont think my buildings would cover her