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Somebody stole my laptop. I made a connection to it while he had Teamviewer still running. The police says that they can't start tracing the laptop because the IP is abroad. But what doesn't make sense is that the IP traces to the city I live in: Amsterdam.

Does anybody know any good ways to trace an IP address?

Rory Alsop
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user49498
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    You have really asked 2 different questions: 1) how can I prove my laptop is in my city so I can inform the police, and 2) how can I physically trace my laptop? #1 is easy. #2 is hard. What are you really needing to know? – schroeder Jun 17 '14 at 14:38
  • Since me and the police have the ip adress. and the online tools tell me it belongs to a dutch(holland) ISP, and the ip adres pinpoints to somewhere in amsterdam. i don't get why the police would tell me that the ip adres is somewhere abroad. So if you can help me answer quesion 1, i would already be delighted:). Thanks – user49498 Jun 17 '14 at 14:50
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    They could have meant that having an IP alone does not point them to somewhere that they can do anything. If all you have is an IP, they might not try to do anything. Use your Teamviewer connection to gather more data? These types of crimes are very difficult to resolve. – schroeder Jun 17 '14 at 14:54
  • One idea is to get the Mac address of any wifi router it connects to. Google and other companies have huge location DBs of these correlated with gps data gathered by phones. See my answer to actually make your browser do this work. – thedrs Jun 17 '14 at 16:07
  • Edited to remove the 'how do I make sure they do their job' bit – Rory Alsop Jul 18 '14 at 08:15

3 Answers3

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You can use the nearby wireless networks to pinpoint the location of your computer, If they are nearby, or connected to a fairly unique SSID/Network Name, you can most likely find it on the Wigle website.

To ensure that you are able to track your laptop if they should remove teamviewer or your user account, I would remotely install a tool such as Prey.

Edit: daniel Azuelos suggest creating a backup admin account - good idea.

Dog eat cat world
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  • → cat eater: I'd suggest to improve your answer: 1. create another admin account, 2. ask the police if they don't mind the victim provide them some more information (so as to avoid to be accused of interfering with the police investigations later). – dan Jul 18 '14 at 06:38
  • Thanks, creating a backup admin account is a good idea. I am not sure if I agree on your second point. It seems the police is not actually investigating this case, they could have asked the ISP for more details of the IP if they wanted to. – Dog eat cat world Jul 18 '14 at 10:12
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Here is a good method to try:

Open team viewer at some late hour.

Open a browser to http://mylocation.org/

Choose the 'Browser Geolocation' option and click on the start test button. A popup will appear that asks whether to share your location with this site - select yes.

See my comment to your question as to why this is much more accurate than GeoIP tracking.

thedrs
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The fact that the actual IP address of your stolen laptop, let's say XX to name it, seems to be located in your actual city let me diagnose 2 things:

  • you live in a big city or within the suburb of a big city, Amsterdam is such a big one,

  • this XX belongs to a huge block of IP addresses belonging to an important ISP which offices are located in Amsterdam. You may check this thanks to whois XX.

This doesn't imply that your thief lives or stays in Amsterdam. This depends of the geographical coverage of the ISP he is connected to right now.

dan
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