Local company IT Crimes - in partnership with police, the second-hand dealers and pawn board, various insurance companies and iBurst - has created a Web portal to help track and recover stolen PCs and laptops.
The site allows people to register the serial codes of their computers with IT Crimes, which will be notified by the SAPS and the board when stolen computers are located.
IT Crimes and the SAPS will then be able to contact the victim, and arrange for the stolen hardware to be returned, according to director Shaun van Coller. He adds that there is a high probability that data stored on the hardware can also be recovered.
A profitable crime
"Compared to hijacking, for instance, computer theft is a less risk solution, and the market for stolen computers as a complete unit or in its component form is huge," he notes.
Van Coller adds that although the SAPS recovers large volumes of computers and laptops, the lawful owners are often untraceable as people often fail to report serial numbers when machines are stolen.
A once-off registration fee of R29.95 entitles computers to be registered on the site, and IT Crimes will provide a certificate number.
This certificate number should be quoted to IT Crimes in the instance of theft, explains Van Coller. This information, added to a case number from the SAPS, legally entitles IT Crimes to attempt to "locate the stolen computer by its various channels of information gathering".
The database
All information is stored securely on a National Independent Computer Serial Number Database.
Van Coller says interest so far has revealed a roughly equal split between private individuals and businesses registering their computers, although he declines to reveal the number of registered machines on the database.
He emphasises the need for the broader community to take a proactive approach to eradicate this form of crime in SA. "One can`t just blame crime on the government; we have to stand together as a nation."
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