If you plan to cart your shiny, new laptop to campus, beware. Leaving your laptop unattended—even just to use the washroom, or to snag the latest issue of The Varsity—is all the time a thief needs to unburden you of your multi-thousand dollar machine (plus all your priceless essays, photos, and GarageBand tracks). However, U of T’s campus police are now offering a line of defense—the Secure Tracking of Office Property (or STOP) program. For only $20, U of T’s fuzz will affix a small tag to the top of your laptop and enter all your vitals into their database. The tag (which features “STOP” in giant bold letters) acts as a deterrent to would-be thieves. Since almost all laptop looters steal machines to resell them for cash, it’s important that the computer not look like stolen property. The STOP tag—which also sports a unique serial number and info on how to contact their tracking system—requires more than 800 pounds of force to remove, and even if the thief is like totally jacked and can actually manage that, there’s a permanent tattoo under the plate which reads “stolen property” and again lists the number for the campus cops. Since losing your laptop is akin to losing a life-line these days, get hooked up this fall and let the lowlifes know that stealing your laptop is more trouble than it’s worth.
