Hotels- Where do you leave your laptop when you leave the room?

[slag]

When given physical access to a machine that is merely password protected at the OS level, the password can be circumvented within a few seconds. Windows or Unix/Linux.

Right, because your typical 20-60 something Hispanic maid is a master hacker in disguise and cares about what is on your laptop.. /roll.

They have a certain amount of time to get in, clean your room, and get out. They don't give two shits about any data on the laptop and certainly wouldn't risk their job to steal one.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Your just getting into BIOS and booting off a different drive (or USB drive) and running a password recovery program right?.

Pretty much. Hiren's boot CD is a common one.

You can't reset password via AD or LDAP?

I'm talking local password. Idealy, a company laptop would not have any data on it because it should be stored on the company servers and only accessible via VPN. Heck, even personal, most of my stuff would be on my home server and I'd be VPNing home to access it.

Sheesh man. I don't know if you are just naive or what. Housekeeping staff will go into your room if you are not there to refresh towels and such . Believe me there are keys around. I work at a hotel and there is a master key that gets you into every room, occupied or not. Whoever needs it just grabs it at will. From time to time it comes up missing.

LOL and you think someone is going to risk their jobs to steal someone's laptop? Now if keys are "going missing" that's very irresponsible of the hotel.

 

[Ksyder]

LOL and you think someone is going to risk their jobs to steal someone's laptop? Now if keys are "going missing" that's very irresponsible of the hotel.

That's all true. I'm just saying you never know, I don't personally know any hotel workers that engage in this type of behavior, but I'm just pointing out the kind of access that random people have to your hotel room. Obviously honest people would never go in your room, but to say that 'locks' will protect you isn't exactly true.

 

[chimaxi83]

When I travel for work, it's almost always at least a month long trip, and I take my sig machine with me, along with the 27" monitor. It all gets left in the hotel room obviously, and I've never had an issue, or a worry for that matter.

I leave my webcam connected, which is activated by motion, and shines it's bright red light when it records... not sure if that has anything to do with my good luck

 

[unokitty]

An estimated more than two million laptop computers are stolen, lost, or misplaced in the United States annually... 1 in 10 laptops will be stolen within their lifetime.

The FBI estimates that 10% of all laptops purchased in the US will be stolen within the first year of ownership... Highlights of the "The Billion Dollar Lost-Laptop Study" survey conducted by Intel Corporation and the Ponemon Institute, which analyzed the scope and circumstances of missing laptop PCs.

The survey of 329 companies found that more than 86,000 laptops had been lost or stolen.
...
Transportation venues, such as airports and train stations are not the riskiest places; seemingly safe locations, such as homes and hotel rooms account for more than 40 percent of laptop disappearances.
43% of laptops are lost off-site (e.g. working from a home office or hotel room)
33% of laptops are lost in-transit (e.g. travel)
12% of laptops are lost in the workplace and the remainder unknown
--Source

Uno

 

[Patranus]

That may not be exactly true. It will be very hard to prove that a maid stole the laptop, and also if it is not stored in a safe then the hotel may not be responsible. Obviously a lawyer would be able to state this definitively and is probably different in each state.

Well if you want to know a secret. I book all my travels through my companies account regardless of my type of travel. So if they don't want to lose me and my companies business then they will aqueous to my concerns. Simple as that.

 

[MixMasterTang]

I take it you two don't travel internationally or do anything important like work, banking, investing etc on your laptops? Lots of countries look at hotels as cheap and easy ways to get physical access to someone's personal/work data. Lots of stories about computers being left unattended in hotel rooms that have been accessed.

I've been to 10+ different countries for work and I've never been worried about my laptop being stolen in any of the places outside of the US. Normally the employees value their job more than the average hotel employee in the US.

 

[Ksyder]

Well if you want to know a secret. I book all my travels through my companies account regardless of my type of travel. So if they don't want to lose me and my companies business then they will aqueous to my concerns. Simple as that.

Color me impressed :whiste:

 

[ch33zw1z]

Your just getting into BIOS and booting off a different drive (or USB drive) and running a password recovery program right?.

Whole Disk Encryption definitely complicates anything related to this.

Locking the laptop from a cold boot out of hibernate or shutdown with a Power On password is step 1. Locking down the BIOS with a Supervisor password, and removing anything from the boot list but the hard disk is step 2.

This would render this process, and the laptop, useless. Not to mention making your data much harder to access. This is for protection from being stolen, not trying to help someone recover the password obviously

 

[herm0016]

co would remote wipe it as soon as it touched a network i am sure.

I usually take it with anyway. I have to be very aware of my luggage weight when i travel to and from work, a laptop lock is non-esential gear. I only get 12kg for my checked bag and 7 for my carry on for 35 days work/stay. lappy itself probably weights 4kg with brick and such.

 

[Meractik]

nevermind, touched later in thread as I read more..