GET AN EMAIL ALERT (WITH PICTURE) WHEN SOMEONE TRIES TO LOG INTO YOUR COMPUTER

By Ishant Gupta

Sometimes you get an intuition that your computer has been used by someone or there has been an attempt to login into your system in your absence. You also suspect that your colleague might have tried a few times to get through your password and failed.

It would be good in such cases to get a notification or alert if something like this happens. But how can you get notified.

A new website (made in Turkey) called MouseLock.co provides a simple solution here. This website sends you an email alert as well as a picture of the intruder as soon as someone tries to use your computer.

Here’s how it works.

You sign-in with your Google Account (they’ll send the alert to your Gmail address) and then select a secret pin on the screen. Put your mouse cursor in a designated area on the Mouse Lock website and leave the machine.

If somebody now tries to scroll the mouse, he will have to enter the original PIN. If the intruder fails to do it in few seconds then the software will send you an email alert and if possible a photo if your webcam is on.

The software may not be able to prevent the intrusion but atleast helps to notify you in time. Also since this is a web application it does not require any kind of installation.

Internally, the site uses jQuery (mouseLeaveEvent) to detect mouse movements while the webcam photographs are captured using the getUserMedia() API currently supported in Chrome and Firefox. The only bug in this application is that alerts may be sent even when any of the keys are pressed. This makes it difficult to lock the computer after the monitor is set.