F.A.Q.
Can I transfer my license to a new machine?
No problem! First uninstall Undercover on your old Mac. Then install a fresh copy of Undercover on your new one.
Can I uninstall Undercover?
Yes, you can. If you haven't registered Undercover yet, you can uninstall Undercover by clicking the Uninstall button in the setup assistant that's part of the installation process. If you are a registered Undercover user, you can find the instructions here.
Can Undercover be uninstalled by a thief?
For a thief, uninstalling Undercover is impossible. You can only uninstall Undercover if you know the Administrator password for the given mac.
Do you charge any additional fees?
No. The $49 price tag includes everything, there are no annual fees and no hidden costs. Undercover upgrades might be paid (or not). In short, Undercover does not differ from most other commercial apps: there are no subscription costs but upgrades might be paid.
Do you have a 64-bit version of Undercover?
Yes, Undercover automatically switches to 64-bit if you are running it on a 64-bit enabled Mac. This requires Snow Leopard.
Do you offer educational volume discounts?
Yes. Please visit our education page.
Does Undercover need much memory while monitoring my Mac?
No. On a typical Mac OS X system with 512 MB of RAM, Undercover needs about 1% of the memory, which is *very* low.
Does Undercover send its alert emails via my regular e-mail application?
Undercover is totally independent of any mail application or framework. In fact, it does not send the mail itself, it contacts our Undercover monitoring server which sends the mail. Undercover is not dependent upon SMTP servers.
Does Undercover work in my country?
Yes. Undercover works worldwide.
Does Undercover work on Snow Leopard?
Yes, since version 3.1 Undercover is compatible with Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard
Help, my Mac has been stolen but it did not have Undercover installed on it! Can you recover it?
We are very sorry, but we can only recover Macs that have Undercover installed on it. Undercover consists of both client and server components and both are necessary to recover a stolen Mac.
Help: I did not get the email containing my Undercover ID!
You should receive the email containing the Undercover ID within one hour. Make sure the email has not been filtered out by your spam filter.
If you can't find the email, please try the following:
- Choose Go To Folder from the Finder's Go menu
- Enter the following path: /usr/bin/uc
- Launch the UndercoverRegistration app in this folder and enter your email and license key
- You should receive the confirmation email within 60 minutes
If that still does not work, please repeat this procedure with an alternate email address.
How do I uninstall Undercover?
- If you are running Tiger or Leopard, go to the following folder in the Finder: /Library/LaunchDaemons
- If you are running Snow Leopard, go to the following folder in the Finder: /Library/LaunchAgents
- Remove com.orbicule.uc.plist
- Restart your Mac
- Choose Go To Folder from the Finder's Go menu
- Enter the following path: /usr/bin
- Remove the uc folder in this folder
Note that these instructions are useless for anyone who does not know the admin password (which should include all thieves)
How do I upgrade Undercover to Snow Leopard?
If you are currently running Undercover on Tiger or Leopard, and you want to upgrade your Mac to Snow Leopard, you can easily do so:
- Install Snow Leopard on your Mac (there is no need to remove Undercover first)
- Download Undercover 3.2 or later and run the installer.
The installer will automatically remove older Undercover versions.
Undercover recognizes your registration information, so you won't be prompted to enter your license key again.
How does Undercover know when the stolen Mac has arrived at an Apple store or reseller?
We continuously monitor the location of any stolen machine. When it changes, we look it up and check to see if it is at a reseller or Apple store.
How many Macs does the household license cover?
The household license covers up to 5 Macs in your household. Users of a household license should be 'family' and live in the same place, although students away from home could share the license with their parents. Companies are not elegible for a household license.
How much bandwidth does Undercover use during routine checks?
Undercover contacts our server only when your Mac changes its online status. During this contact, about 5000 bytes (not Kilobytes!) are transfered. This process is extremely low-bandwith and about the equivalent of visiting a web page with one paragraph of text and no images. During this process, no ID information is transfered from your Mac to our server.
I'm getting a popup window, telling me that uc wants to use my location
On Snow Leopard, Undercover uses Apple's built-in Core Location to obtain the most accurate location possible. The first time an application uses Core Location, it will ask you whether you want to allow that application to use your location. Simply click 'Allow' and make sure to check the 'Don't ask again' checkbox. From now on, Core Location will no longer prompt you when Undercover needs to know your location.
I'm using another anti-theft application, can I upgrade to Undercover?
Yes, and you can do so for only $39! Just purchase a student license from our store and send us a proof of purchase of your previous anti-theft software.
If I take my Mac on a trip and log on to pick up email etc. will this trigger Undercover?
No, your computer will work just as it does at home and it will disregard the location of the notebook until you actually register your computer as stolen by going to http://orbicule.com/theft. If your notebook is stolen anywhere in the world, find a computer with Internet access such as at an Internet Café and register the computer as stolen as quickly as possible. Always remember to carry your Undercover ID code separately. A worldwide list of internet cafés is available at http://www.cybercafes.com.
Is it possible for Undercover to work behind a firewall?
Yes, Undercover has the ability to autodetect any proxy or firewall settings used to connect to the Internet. Undercover collects and autodetects the necessary settings to access the Internet even if your firewall requires a password.
Is it possible to use Undercover with Little Snitch?
Yes, when Undercover (a process called uc) wants to connect to our servers (www.orbicule.com) for the first time, Little Snitch will ask you what to do. Just select "Allow connections forever" and set the condition to "Any connection". On Snow Leopard, the Apple location daemon (locationd) will need permission to connect as well. After changing Little Snitch settings, make sure to lock the settings by clicking the lock icon. That way, a thief won't be able to change LS settings.
Is Undercover available for Windows?
No. We focus all our software development efforts on Mac OS X.
Is Undercover delivered to me as download or disk?
Undercover is download-only. Upon registration, you will receive a confirmation email from Kagi, our online reseller. This email contains your personal license key and instructions to download and install Undercover on your Mac. Please read this email carefully and save it.
However, when you order Undercover through our Kagi online store, you may add a backup disc to your shopping cart. This CD will be shipped to the address you provide.
Is Undercover spyware?
Not at all! Undercover won't transmit any information from your Mac to our servers if the Mac it is running on has not been stolen. The only thing Undercover will do is to check from time to time whether it is running on a stolen Mac. If it is not, no data will be transfered.
On what systems does Undercover work?
It works on all Macs running Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) or Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). You can check the version of Mac OS X running on your Mac by selecting "About This Mac" from the Apple menu.
What about my privacy? Can't you or someone else use Undercover to observe what I'm doing on my Mac?
Undercover is 100% secure. It can only start monitoring a Mac if it is stolen and if you send us the unique Undercover ID you have received upon installation. This code is unique and it is linked to the Mac you installed Undercover on. This code is not to be confused with the license key you will receive upon registering Undercover.
What about OS upgrades?
We are 100% committed to support the latest version of OS X. For example, we made the Leopard-compatible version of Undercover available less than 48 hours after Leopard itself had been released, and we released a 64-bit version for Snow Leopard on the day of Snow Leopard's launch.
What if someone does a clean install of OS X on my machine?
You can prevent this by installing a firmware password. You can find the firmware password utility on your Mac OS X DVD (in /Applications/Utilities/ on the disc). Make sure to reboot your Mac after enabling the firmware password.
IMPORTANT NOTE: On the Leopard / Snow Leopard DVD, the firmware password is still in /Applications/Utilities, but this folder is now hidden.
In order to view the hidden Utilities folder in the Finder:
- Insert your Leopard / Snow Leopard installation DVD
- Press Command + Shift + G (Go To Folder)
- Enter /Volumes/Mac OS X Upgrade DVD/Applications/Utilities in the dialog box
(where Mac OS X Upgrade DVD is the name of your (Snow) Leopard DVD: this name might be different)
What if the thief can't login into an account? Will Undercover still phone home?
We do recommend to create a dummy account that will enable the thief to play around on your Mac. This account should have a blank password and no admin privileges.
What programming language / framework is used to develop Undercover?
Undercover is written in Objective-C, leveraging the Cocoa frameworks.
What to do in case of theft?
In case of theft, please point your browser to http://orbicule.com/theft to add your Mac's Undercover ID to our list of stolen Macs. This will trigger Undercover on your stolen machine. We will then contact you within 24 hours to work out all the details.
Will Undercover protect only laptops?
No. In addition to protecting your MacBook, MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, Undercover can be used to protect your iMac, Mac Pro or Mac Mini as well.
Will Undercover run natively on my Intel-based Mac?
Yes! During development, Undercover has been tested on both PowerPC and Intel based Macs. As a result, Undercover is a universal binary that runs natively on every Macintosh that can run Tiger or later, including your brand new iMac or MacBook. In fact, it's the first universal theft-recovery application in the world.