If your Linux laptop is lost or stolen

Losing a laptop is stressful, but a few quick actions protect your accounts and your data. And one thing you set up beforehand, disk encryption, decides whether your files are safe or wide open.

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CE: Secure ConfigurationEasy

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If it happens

Act quickly from another device.

Change your important passwords from another device, starting with email. This cuts off access to anything saved or logged in on the laptop.
Sign out of your accounts remotely where you can. Google, Microsoft, and others let you review your devices and sign out the missing one.
Report it. Tell the police if it was stolen (you may get a crime reference for insurance), and tell your employer if it held work data.

3 steps

Why encryption matters so much here

If your disk was encrypted with LUKS, your files are unreadable to whoever has the laptop, even if they remove the drive. Without encryption, they can read everything simply by plugging the drive into another machine. This is why the disk-encryption guide is worth doing before anything goes wrong.

Encrypt your disk with LUKS

For next time

Three things make a lost laptop a non-event.

Turn on disk encryption if you haven't.
Keep a recent backup, so a lost laptop costs you the hardware and nothing more.
Use a strong login password, so the running machine can't just be opened.

3 steps

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