A suspected burglar has been arrested after a student activated tracking software installed on her missing laptop.

Emma Partington turned on the Prey software, which she had downloaded, after discovering she had been the victim of a burglary in Bristol.

It gave her a GPS location of her laptop, revealed the Wi-Fi address the stolen machine was connected to and even took a picture of the man using it.

The laptop was stolen in a burglary of a shared student home in the Cotham area of Bristol.

Partington said: "I got home late at night and when I realised what had happened I went to my friend's and activated a software application I had installed free on my laptop called Prey.

"I went to bed and when I woke up I had received an email from the company which stated that my laptop had been used at 3am and gave me a GPS location of the Wi-Fi address it was connected to, a list of sites that had been visited and even took a photograph of the person using the laptop.

"I contacted the police with all this information and they printed it all off."

Detective Inspector Gavin McClory said: "Tracking software is a powerful tool in the fight against thieves and we would recommend people make use of the software that is available to download on computers and some smartphones."