Location tracking

[Dent]

@Blueman @Damein

Dear all,

I couldn't find anything that related exactly to what I'm trying to achieve although I did find some examples from the two people I've tagged in which has gotten me so far.

I understand this topic could be a contentious issue and perhaps that's why there's no threads that I could find that relate directly to it. If the subject is taboo then I'll completely understand it if this thread is deleted.

I want to write a program that periodically posts the IP address and Geo/GPS location data to me some way e.g. ftp/POST/email - the back-story is below.

Ok so recently I had a computer stolen from my office, the actual value of the computer is very low as it was 10 years old and just for basic office tasks. Whilst the important files were backed up I never got around to automating this process so I lost a couple of weeks work when it was stolen.

Anyway, this computer was used mainly by one employee and as I wouldn't be at the office a lot of the time I would use VNC to help when they got stuck with a particular task. As the IP was dynamic I found the dynamic DNS solutions supported by the router not to be very reliable so I wrote a small AutoIt program that called the dynamic DNS update link every 15 minutes, this program was in the Start Menu -> Programs -> Start Up folder and worked fine. This computer was a desktop box with no Wifi so was connected via Ethernet.

As the accounts on the machine are password protected, whoever ends up with the box is likely to format the HD and put a fresh OS on there so this program is unlikely to run again which is a shame because as it's a desktop box with no Wifi I could use the IP address to give to the Police who could get the users name and address by matching who that IP was assigned to at that time. This is very unlikely to be a coffee shop etc.

So I'm a lot more security and disaster recovery minded now and have replaced that box with a laptop that the staff member can take home with them each day and it automatically backs up to OneDrive upon log in.

I've put VNC and the dynamic DNS AutoIt program on there but as this is a laptop with Wifi it's obviously very portable and can be used to get online from more locations.

What I want to do is create another program that gets the device location as well as the IP and sends it to me every 15 minutes or so. I'd plan to put this program in a Guest account that has no password so if this laptop were ever stolen the next user would actually be able to log in and this program would run. Even better would be for this program to be started as a service so it runs before logging in to an account, just like VNC does. Being a laptop it could be used by a thief or other unauthorised user in a coffee shop etc.

The solution I have explored so far is have a local .htm file that is opened via AutoIt program which when it has loaded displays the latitude and longitude of the machine, the program then saves this to a file with IP address and date/time stamp and sends it to me somehow (I'll probably implement multiple ways of it notifying me just in case of firewalls). The instance of IE would load minimized and quit after the lat/long is read; as it is such a small page running locally this all happens very quickly so is hard for any user to detect and cancel/intercept.

My only problem with this implementation is I can't find a way for the page to start the script and obtain the location without user interaction (clicking Allow). I know why this is like this, because it could be used to spy on peoples location so could be open to mis-use.

So perhaps there is a better way, programmatically within AutoIt using Google Maps API (which I haven't looked into properly yet) to do this where there is no user interaction required?

There are probably commercial applications to do just this (similar to FindMyiPhone) but I've not investigated the availability of those for Windows and don't see how such a commercial application would be any less open to mis-use so why not create my own little app if possible and avoid the cost.

[Melba23]

Dent,

  Quote

I understand this topic could be a contentious issue and perhaps that's why there's no threads that I could find that relate directly to it. If the subject is taboo then I'll completely understand it if this thread is deleted.

Expand  

Too right it is contentious - thread locked.

M23