ADWIZ According to studies that were published a few years ago, the vast majority of computer thieves know absolutely nothing about computers and only want to sell them. They don't reformat anything. Those who do keep them also prefer not to reformat because they want to use the software that's on the machine. This makes Undercover quite useful, provided that law enforcement officials actually act on the information. When my car was stolen nothing was done to retrieve the contents even though the thief left me with documentation containing his address, which I gave to police.
I'm concerned about the Plan B approach, however. I'm not sure how the system knows that the computer is in a repair shop. If it experiences a "hardware problem" I find it quite unlikely that the thief would take the machine to a repair shop. If it was fenced off to someone else then it is possible that the person would do this, but even then there is a strong chance they wouldn't take such action because people who buy a stolen piece of equipment are likely to know it is hot. You don't buy a computer for $100 without suspicion. What if it's at the home of someone else and the "stolen" information appears on the screen? That would pretty much guarantee a reformat of the drive.
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