Prey is a software and online platform for mobile
device tracking, management, and protection available for laptops, tablets, and mobiles. The software and service is developed by the Chilean company Prey Inc., successor of the funding company Fork Ltd.
Prey was originally created by the developer Tomás Pollak who together with Carlos Yaconi, the current CEO of the company, founded Fork Ltd. and released the first version of Prey for Linux.
Functioning
Prey started as an anti-theft software for recovering lost mobile devices which evolved into remote management with device and data protection. The service works through a client, or
application
Application may refer to:
Mathematics and computing
* Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks
** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...
, installed on the devices that are to be protected.
Company
Prey Inc. is a private software development company. Currently, it operates offices in San Francisco and in
Santiago de Chile.
Features
The main feature in the platform is location tracking for any of the supported devices, with active monitoring of device movement. The service also has automatic reactions to location triggers, such as unwanted movements, that trigger security actions instantly when the event is detected.
*Provides a set of features that give the user remote security capabilities in case of theft or loss.
*Remotely recover or wipe information from a lost or stolen devices.
*Tools that streamline management processes and maintain a device inventory for global monitoring.
*Evidence generation tool for device recovery.
Source code
The source code in Prey's agents, or applications, is
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
code under the GNU General Public License (GPLv3). The online platform's code and infrastructure are private and property of Prey Inc.
Versions
The first version of the agent was released originally for Linux and Mac OS X in March 2009 and for Microsoft Windows in April 2009.
Currently, Prey is available for laptops, tablets and mobiles in the macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS operating systems.
References
External links
*
Interview with Tomás Pollak* {{github, prey
Cross-platform free software
Laptops
Free security software
Free and open-source Android software
Location-based software
Theft
Security software