How to track down a stolen gadget Stolen phone? Lost laptop? Missing camera?

New software and services can pinpoin t your purloined tech. Temp Headline Image Laptop stolen? Software called Hidden will let you see who's using the purloined computer. (Carl Wiens) By Chris Gaylord, Staff writer posted June 28, 2011 at 4:01 pm EDT Theft is a tough crime to crack. Burglars rarely leave behind any evidence; witn esses are few and far between; and police resources, especially in cities, often go toward homicides and other more pressing crimes. In Oakland, Calif., three police investigators must juggle 2,400 new reports of stolen property each month. "Laptops are not so much a priority," says Holly Joshi, spokeswoman for the Oakl and Police Department. "Unless a citizen has seen the burglar, we don't have the staffing levels to chase everything down." RELATED: The 10 weirdest uses for a smartphone So when Joshua Kaufman reported the theft of his MacBook to the Oakland police i n March, he didn't hear anything back. But Mr. Kaufman had a secret weapon. Befo re his computer was stolen, he had installed Hidden, a laptop locator. Hidden, and other forms of software like it, offer gadget owners some peace of m ind. The programs help track down and recover lost or stolen electronics. Here a re some of the best options for Macs, PCs, phones, and digital cameras: Computers: The Hidden software runs quietly in the background, providing three u seful, if borderline creepy, tools to locate iMacs and MacBooks. For $15 a year, the program can pinpoint a missing machine to within a quarter-mile radius, all ow a Mac's true owner to take screen shots of what programs are running, and rem otely turn on the laptop's webcam to snap pictures of the person using it. A month after the break-in, Kaufman handed police a trove of images and informat ion about his MacBook's illegitimate new owner. Since burglars often fence stole n property, Kaufman couldn't be sure if the young man in these pictures was the actual robber, but he provided police with the person's work e-mail account, tyi ng the suspect to a local taxi company. After some extra nudging from news outlets and social media, including Kaufman's o wn blog (called This Guy Has My MacBook), the police arrested the man on May 31 and reunited Kaufman with his missing laptop. Prey performs many of the same features for Macs, PCs, and Linux computers without the annual fee. If your laptop goes missing, Prey will continuously search for an Internet connection. Once it can phone home, the software will e-mail its own er with approximate coordinates. Unfortunately, Prey and Hidden only work if the computer is turned on, and a sma rt crook could wipe your hard drive, removing the software. Still, applications such as Hidden and Prey are "definitely a helpful tool," says Ms. Joshi, with th e Oakland police. "It's not very expensive, so if people feel comfortable doing so, they should look into installing it."

Go to hiddenapp.com and preyproject.com for details and downloads. Phones: Between satellite data, Wi-Fi triangulation, and cell-tower signals, mob ile phones are one of the easiest devices to track down if you have the right soft ware. Apple has a free Find My iPhone feature. The service, part of Apple's MobileMe, will pinpoint a lost or stolen iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to within a few yards. The owner can send an alert that will pop up on the device's screen, such as a m essage that reads, "If found, please contact " Apple can also remotely add password protection or erase the hard drive entirely. Android phone users can download Lookout, a free app that locates lost phones, as well as back up contacts and install anti-malware protection. The company also h as a $30-a-year premium service that lets you lock down or remotely wipe an Andr oid device. In March, a beta version of BlackBerry Protect opened up free tools to locate an d erase handsets. Many of these features already came included in BlackBerry's e nterprise packages. RELATED: Eight low-tech ways to revive broken gadgets Cameras: Most digital photographs come with detailed information hidden inside t he code. These secret tags note the shutter speed, flash settings and the serial n umber of the camera. GadgetTrak.com/CameraSearch scours the Internet for images and logs every serial number it can find. The new website has filed 3.5 million unique identifiers in less than a month. E nter your serial number and the free service will sniff out photos taken from th at camera. If GadgetTrak brings up images you don't recognize, it may have just ratted out a sneaky child who's borrowed your camera without asking or identified the thief w ho's made off with your stolen dSLR. Increasingly, modern cameras also record where an image was taken, providing ext ra evidence against a culprit. GadgetTrak's Camera Search and similar site StolenCameraFinder.com are rather ne w services. They may not have indexed your photos yet. If a serial-number search comes up dry, try again in a few weeks or months. [Editor's Note: The original version of this story called Stolen Camera Finder a "competitor" to Camera Search. In fact, GadgetTrak shares its data, loading wha t it finds into the SCF database.]