Recently someone used our credit card number to order a Dell laptop online. We got the matter settled with our credit card company so the money is no longer the issue; I was just wondering if Dell could potentially help us track the culprit down.

Is there any way to pinpoint the location of a laptop if it's connected to the web via Wi-Fi? Does Dell have any way of identifying a laptop of its own (MAC address, maybe?) and find out its corresponding IP address? and in general, what could we potentially do with the MAC or IP address if we should discover it? a brief explanation of MAC and IP addresses would be very helpful.Dell has no vested interest in finding the laptop...they got paid so...

The laptop could only be traced if it had a GPS locator inside of it.

The millions of IP addresses being used times the number of possible MAC addresses reduce this POSSIBILITY even further.

Sorry.could you briefly explain -- what's the difference between an IP and MAC address?An IP is an Internet Service Provider's # assigned to users who are paying for Internet access...they are 12 digits in LENGTH and my math is kinda fuzzy right now so i don't know how many possibilities that amounts to...

A MAC address is a # assigned to a specific router which an Internet signal is broadcast to. Again there are a bunch of #'s involved here as well...Sorry Patio, but you need to read up on TCP/IP.

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An IP is an Internet Service Provider's # assigned to users who are paying for Internet access...they are 12 digits in length and my math is kinda fuzzy right now so i don't know how many possibilities that amounts to...

A MAC address is a # assigned to a specific router which an Internet signal is broadcast to. Again there are a bunch of #'s involved here as well...

In computer networking a Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier attached to most network adapters (NICs). It is a number that acts like a name for a particular network adapter, so, for example, the network cards (or built-in network adapters) in two different computers will have different names, or MAC addresses, as would an Ethernet adapter and a wireless adapter in the same computer, and as would multiple network cards in a router. However, it is possible to change the MAC address on most of today's hardware.

An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique address that certain electronic devices use in order to IDENTIFY and communicate with each other on a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol standard (IP)—in simpler terms, a computer address. Any participating network device—including routers, computers, time-servers, printers, Internet fax machines, and some telephones—can have their own unique address.

IPv4 uses 32-bit (4-byte) addresses, which limits the address space to 4,294,967,296 possible unique addresses.

As for tracing the perpetrator: I'd trace back what you've done wrong in the past with PCs before as your personal information was obviously stolen.. Probably through the use of too many file sharing programs, Internet Explorer and too little security know-how..

Thanx for the clarifications...

I haven't done my homework.

No supper tonite.