

HiddenApp goes AWOL? - helipad

Remember HiddenApp, the app which helps vigilante Mac owners find their stolen laptop? It might have gone missing.<p>Recently a friend noticed a charge on his credit card statement. "Flipcode Ltd" was not a familiar name. A little googling later, it appears Flipcode is the company behind HiddenApp. They had a promo around Christmas 2010 where you could get the app for free, and enjoyed viral fame when someone liveblogged the hunt for their stolen Mac.<p>Worryingly, HiddenApp appears to have fallen off the radar. They don't have a contact page, but the Privacy page includes a business name and phone number. Sadly for my friend, the phone rings off. The postal address is a PO Box, which though not uncommon, doesn't help us locate them. A Companies House lookup reveals only the address of their online accountants. This wouldn't in and of itself be worrying, unless you needed to get hold of them.<p>There has been no response, automatic or otherwise, to emails in over a week. The website copyright footer says 2010. The more you let your imagination run away with you, the worse the situation looks. With no blog posts in almost two months, and no activity on Twitter since June 1st (which mentions an address in Watford, UK), @replies have gone unanswered. It's hard to identify any company activity in the support forum.<p>Whilst HiddenApp may well be alive and well (it seems to function OK), you have to wonder whether it's safe to use a service that itself has gone incognito. Had we not investigated, we might not have discovered the inactivity until it was too late. Indeed, does it even work with Lion?<p>If security is freedom from care, anxiety or doubt, right now there's enough cause for concern to move away from HiddenApp. Has anyone heard from Flipcode? Should we be moving towards Prey?<p>Summary:<p>No email response
 No phone response,
 No tweets,
 No blogs,
 No address,
 No forum activity
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mattvot
Love Prey. The amount of times I've lost my phone while out and about, to find
it was home all along is appalling.

Go with Prey, it's open source so if the company goes, you can still use it.

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rafteklansing
Had never heard of Prey - wish I had! I just removed Hidden off my Mac. I've
always been a bit wary of stolen tracking services (inc. Undercover), but the
fact this service is open source shows a transparency level not seen from
these other companies. Thanks for the tip.

