27 January 2009

Undercover 3 unveiled

It's here: the most significant update to Undercover since its introduction on January 18 2006. During these three years, Undercover has gone from 1.0 to 2.5 without any upgrade charge. We are continuing this commitment to our users, with the 3.0 release: it's totally free for registered users! Over the coming days, all current users will be notified of this update by email.

The landmark feature of Undercover 3 is of course the Skyhook Wireless integration. It is the same technology that powers location tracking on the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Thanks to Skyhook technology, Undercover 3 can now locate your stolen Mac within a range of 10-20 meters (about 30-60 feet). Having immediate access to your Mac's location will enable our recovery center to provide the police with more details about the stolen machine. In addition, the entire process will be much faster too. There will be no more need to work with the ISP.

Think about it: we can now provide the police with a report that shows where your Mac is being used, who is using it (thanks to the iSight pictures) and what the current user is using it for (thanks to the screenshots we take).

We are confident that Undercover 3 with Skyhook location tracking will make a huge difference in the field. It should enable us to be even more aggressive when it comes to recovering stolen Macs. We currently have a 86% recovery rate. Expect this figure to go up...

How to Upgrade?
Upgrading to Undercover 3 is easy: download and run the installer.
That's it. The installer will automatically replace any previous version.
Undercover automatically recognizes any previous registration, so if you have registered Undercover on that Mac before, you won't see the registration screen again. If it can't find a previous registration, you will be prompted to enter your license key. This license key can be found in the email you have received from Kagi after your purchase. The email is sent by admin@kagi.com, you may use Spotlight to find it.

Check whether Undercover is running on your Mac
If you want to be sure that Undercover is running on your Mac, please follow the instructions below:
- Launch the Activity Monitor application in /Applications/Utilities
- Select "All processes" from the popup menu in Activity Monitor's toolbar.
- You should see a process called uc owned by root

Lost your Undercover ID?
You can always have your Undercover ID delivered again by following these instructions. Make sure to store this Undercover ID in a safe place, we will need it in case of theft.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beste Peter,

Bedankt voor de nieuwe versie. Ik heb geupgrade en in Activity Monitor gecontroleerd of het proces uc er is. Is er ook een manier om te controleren of dit echt versie 3.0 is i.p.v. 2.5, want de installatie ging wel erg snel voor mijn gevoel? Of is het niet nodig om dit te controleren?

Vriendelijke groeten,
Mischa.

Peter Schols said...

Hi Mischa,

- Choose Go To Folder from the Finder's Go menu
- Enter the following path: /usr/bin/uc
- The UndercoverRegistration.app in this folder should be at version 3.0

Peter

Anonymous said...

new version with WiFi positioning is just amazing.
thank you guys! it's all I was dreaming about =)

and thanks for free upgrade. that's really appreciated!

Anonymous said...

i still get a disc image that says "Undercover 2.5" by downloading the file from http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/undercover.dmg :(

Peter Schols said...

Hi,

Maybe the 2.5 version is still being cached somewhere. Have you tried with a different browser?

Peter

Leonardo Cassarani said...

Congrats on the upgrade. Am I right in saying though that the Skyhook thing will only work for US customers? I'd love to be proven wrong.

Anonymous said...

ow my god ... the cache proxy at work does his job pretty good. Now i am at home an there it is ... version 3. thank you to share this for free (i am registered user).

Anonymous said...

In answer to Leonardo:

Check the Skyhook Web page. They definitely say that the process works in USA, Europe, and Asia.

Of course it may work better in some places than in others, rural areas in a small country might have poor information.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot, that's amazing!

Peter Schols said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Peter Schols said...

You may check the current Skyhook Wireless coverage at: http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/coverage.php

Unknown said...

Does this mean I need to enable wifi all the time, or can Undercover turn it on by itself should the need arise?

Anonymous said...

What happens if a thief doesn't turn on WiFi? Does a hard wired internet connection through ethernet still work?

Anonymous said...

How good is your crypto? Much as I like the concept to locate a thief, I don't want my own location tracked 24/7. Call me paranoid, but we just lived through 8 years of Dick Cheney.

Obviously, Orbicule must have a way to locate my computer. 1) Can anyone else use the same method to locate me, using the software Orbicule has on my computer? 2) How hard would it be to hack Orbicule's own servers and initiate a "locate" query?

Unknown said...

Thank you for the free upgrade. I appreciate the immense respect you have for your customers.