Chiriquí Chatter

Recently, I have been bombarded by emails from a new company by the name of Computer Protection Service (CPS). Apparently this company has opened up shop in Boquete and is looking for clients to purchase their Computer recovery solution. I guess I must have added my name to some list without realizing it.

CPS recently contacted me so they could speak before the David Yahoo Gringos group and since I am not in charge of that group, I gave them the address of the people in charge.

Being a geek at heart, I am always interested in new technology and the technical part of their service interested me. When I read that the CPS solution was added in the BIOS of most computers at the factory, that made me wonder how this company had enough pull with PC makers to put their software in the PC BIOS.

It further said if it was not in the PC, then it could be easily added. Now this really interested me because flashing a BIOS is one of the last things most people want to do. Any time I have done that, my heart stopped until the flashing was complete and the PC came up from a fresh boot.

That was enough to set me off to learn if the claims of their service were fact or fiction.

My first task was to learn more about CPS. A google for “Computer Protection Service (CPS)” didn’t help. Then I did a WHOIS on “compprosvc.com” and found it was created in January 2010 and the address was in Boquete, Next, I received an email about a social site that the company had formed called compprosvc.ning.com It is a site that says it is to assist people with PC problems. The member “comprosvc”, which I assume is the moderator, has an address listed as Henderson, Nevada. I thought that was interesting. Is CPS Boquete or Nevada based?

One of the things I found on the CPS website was client forms. I was surprised to see a 14 page Client Agreement for users of the service.

After searching the website for details, I decided I needed to research the underlying technology and see what it was based on. At this point, I really wasn’t expecting to find much.

I was surprised to find three companies selling software solutions for laptop tracking and retrieval. The first was Absolute Software.  The second was the cyber angel.  The third was Ztrace.

After studying the three, I decided that CPS is built around Absolute Software. Much of the wording on the CPS site is word for word the same as in the Absolute site. Absolute does indeed have a relationship with the PC manufacturers and they have a web page of the supported PCs that have their BIOS agent built in.

The BIOS software is pretty interesting and has “persistence” and can re install the client agent (which resides on the hard drive) even if the thief removes the hard drive or re-formats the hard drive. If the PC is not one of those in the supported list, then the client and “magic code” will have to be placed on the hard drive, if I understood it all correctly. Non supported laptops would be less secure from theft since hard drive replacement would remove the “magic” software as well as the client software. None the less, CPS is built on a well known product.

The second and third companies use different methods of recognizing and gathering information about the thief.

All of these processes seem to collect the ip address of the computer when it connects to the Internet. I am curious what it would do if your PC was configured to connect to the Internet via VPN.

My investigation of the technical pieces of CPS’ claims are now over. I am convinced it is built on existing capability.

Will the technology allow you to recover a stolen laptop in Panama? Maybe, maybe not. The system needs a connection to the Internet to send information to the monitoring site. I don’t know if the monitoring site is in Panama or in the US. If the laptop is stolen and taken into the country and used as a standalone PC and never connects to the Internet for the period of the contract with CPS, will CPS still work on recovery or does the service expire at the end of the contract period? I assume that you are out of luck if it doesn’t connect until the contract period is up. That is a question for CPS.

If it is stolen and taken to Costa Rica and sold, then things become more complicated. CPS says they will work with the police, but I don’t know if that means the police of what ever country your PC connects to the Internet from or just Panama. That is probably a question to ask CPS.

I do know that laptops are a big theft item in Panama. I am not really a laptop person, but if I were and I was worried about the data on my PC, then I would most likely encrypt it. If the PC was stolen, then it is hardware that is lost, but bank account numbers and stuff I didn’t want others to possibly use could not be read by the thief.

CPS has definitely targeted an interesting market. Theft is up ( especially laptops) and everyone feels vulnerable. If you have a Laptop, you might want to put a label on your laptop, in Spanish and English, that says the PC is protected by PC tracking software. I knew many people in the US that put alarm signs on their houses whether they had them or not. Like Chicken Soup – it couldn’t hurt.

Tags: Technology