How do the Control Zones work

This feature allows you to create zones in the map and get notified each time a device leaves or enters an area.

Cool, huh? You can use it anytime and anywhere, not only after a loss or theft! Furthermore, it’s available for the 5 operating systems that Prey supports: Windows, OSX, Ubuntu, Android and iOS.

Why would I use it?

Whether you own a few laptops at home and just want to be safe in case of theft or you’re a busy IT manager who needs to keep tabs on your organization’s laptops (and you’ve told Andy from accounting a thousand times to please not move laptops from the meeting room to the cafeteria), Control Zones will come in handy.

How to use it

Zones are circular areas that can be placed over the map with a pin, or type a referential address to place the marker. Free users get to create 1 zone only, while our Pro users have no number limit. These are customizable in terms of name, size and color.

Pro users can add as many devices as they want to an individual zone. To add a device, select it from the bar on the left side of the screen. If you’re a heavy user with a large amount of devices, use the search tool at the top. If you have a free account, you can add all your 3 devices to the zone you’ve created.

Selected devices will appear at the top of the list with their name and their connection status to the Prey servers right below. As it’s always the case with Prey services, devices must be connected to the internet to be tracked.

You can customize notifications as well. You can select whether you want to get an email every time a device enters or leaves a zone, or both. If you select to get no email notifications on both cases, though, this feature won’t do much good, since there’s no other way for Prey to warn you that your device is on the move.

Make sure

1. That the zone is not too small (aka set to the minimum size), since there is a margin of error for the accuracy, causing that incorrect and unwanted notifications may be triggered. 
2. Not to use special characters or any other language's lettering. Prey may not be able to read them resulting in an error creating the zone.