Undercover gets reviewed

Goodmorning, blog readers!

We have 2 excellent Undercover reviews for you today: Polish friends, head over to applecafe.pl (review in Polish, evidently). And Yasin Soliman has made an extensive evaluation of all Undercover functionality. Couldn’t agree more with his conclusion:

"Being proactive is the final point to remember, though - take the time to set up each aspect of functionality to ensure that if the worst happens, you’re fully prepared."

First thing to do when your Mac gets stolen? Undercover 6 does it for you!

Imagine for 5 seconds what you would do if your Mac gets stolen...


We bet reporting the theft on UndercoverHQ.com didn’t cross your mind. That’s a shame, because the first few hours after the theft can be quite crucial when it comes to gathering evidence. That’s why we introduce Undercover 6, featuring Undercover Watch. Undercover Watch monitors your Mac and starts collecting evidence as soon as it detects your Mac is out-of-place, even if you haven’t realized it yet.

Undercover Watch can monitor your Mac and activate the recovery procedure when your Mac connects from a network away from your home or work place.
In addition, we’ve always encouraged you to set up dummy or guest accounts for thiefs to use. Now Undercover can activate automatically when a thief uses that account.

Undercover 6 is more than just a software update. It also comes with a major upgrade to our recovery center. We’ve always made a point of having the best theft recovery service available. Now we’re taking this to the next level. From today on, we actively follow up on theft reports. When you report a theft, someone of our theft recovery center will personally get in touch with you.

If you already use Undercover 5, then Undercover 6 is a free upgrade for you! If you have Undercover 5.6, you will receive the update automatically. Otherwise you can install it from https://undercoverhq.com/download.

Taking a shortcut

Last week, someone asked me if there was a key command to activate the Witness alarm on your Mac. There isn’t, but you can easily create one using AppleScript and Automator:

You will first need to create a service in Automator that switches the alarm on:

• Launch Automator (in Applications)
• Choose “Service” from the template menu
• Select “no input” in the “Service receives” drop-down menu

•  With Actions selected in the left-hand toolbar, type “run Applescript” in the search field

• Drag the “Run AppleScript” action to the main view
• Replace (* Your script goes here *) with the following script:

tell application "WitnessUserAgent" to activate

This will activate the alarm on all your Macs.
(For a script that will deactivate the alarm, you can replace "activate" by “deactivate”.)

• Choose File > Save
• Give a name to this service (for example “Activate Witness”)

Now you can assign a keyboard shortcut to this service:

• Open System Preferences > Keyboard
• Go to the Shortcuts tab
• Select “Services” in the left-hand menu
• Scroll down until you find your service
• Select the service and click “add shortcut”
• Press the keys which you would like to use as the shortcut for Witness
• Make sure the box next to the shortcut is checked

You're all set!

Undercover 5.6 is out!

Today we released the last update of Undercover you'll need to install manually. Undercover 5.6, a free upgrade for existing Undercover 5 users, comes with auto-updating. Future updates will install automatically and in the background. Even when your Mac is stolen you can enjoy the latest features!

Undercover now also collects wireless connection information. You'll now know the name and hardware address of each wireless network a thief connects to. This information is often requested by law enforcement officers because it eliminates the need to get a court order to have the ISP release the street address. Now they can just scan the neighborhood with their smartphone to find the access point and its owner!

Undercover 5.6 also improves the accuracy of the GPS fixes. Until now, we used Skyhook Wireless to get the coordinates of a Mac. Apple's Location Services worked fine but were too easy to disable by thiefs. In Mavericks, you again need a administrator password to do this. That's why we now use both frameworks to obtain the most accurate location information available.

You can download and install the update from https://undercoverhq.com/download!