Open source experts at the University of Washington have come up with a cunning plan to find stolen laptops that does not involve tailing the user all the time.

While it is possible to pay cash to have your laptop monitored 24 hours a day, the downside, other than the cost, is that someone knows what you are doing all the time. The team has come up with Adeona, named after the Roman Goddess of Safe Returns, which they think will give people a method for safeguarding their laptops that relies neither on proprietary nor on commercial software.

Tadayoshi Kohno and Gabriel Maganis told Gnomedex over the weekend that Adeona is the world's first free, open-source laptop-tracking system, and one that can be installed by users themselves. They are also hatching out a similar version for iPhones.

Using Adeona, a user makes a copy of a credential key that the software provides and that they must keep on, say, a thumb drive, and which is required to track the laptop if it's stolen. It works a bit like like the LoJack service, but because the tracking doesn't go through central servers, Kohno suggested that there is more privacy and less reliance on corporate middlemen.

It will broadcast the IP address where the computer is used and if it has a built-in camera it will take a picture every 30 seconds to snap a shot of the person using it. It also can sniff the SSID of the wireless network the thief is on, something that could be useful in tracking down the location of the computer.