AT&T,
T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint have completed a stolen smartphone database that keeps track of all smartphones that have been stolen, and will
allow them to block stolen smartphones from being reactivated. The idea is that this will prevent theft –
why steal a phone that cannot be activated again? Although this seems like a great idea, it is
unclear how well it will work – as stated in the article that I linked above,
the UK tried to have a national registry and it was unsuccessful in slowing
down thefts.
There
was an initiative called “Save our Smartphones” that wanted carriers to include
a “kill switch” in their phones that they could use to shut them off if they
were reported stolen. I think that this
would be a great idea – iOS 7 already has something like this, but it should be
spread to more phones. Phone theft is a
huge problem, and having a switch to turn it off could really turn away
potential criminals if enough people used it.
Right now, phones are an easy target for thieves – they are easy to take
and worth a good sum of money for each one.
If everyone had a “kill switch,” that might deter them, but only if
everyone knew how to use it – which is why the carrier should have control of
the kill switch, so that when it is reported stolen, the carrier can hit the
call, not the user. I know that if my
mother’s phone had a kill switch, for instance, and she got her phone stolen,
she probably would not know how to use it, and not bother using it. This does not deter thieves at all – they
will still get a good sum of money for their phone. However, my mom would definitely call her carrier
and report it stolen, so they should be able to hit the kill switch and deter
the thieves.
This
is a technology that I would really like to see put to use, because I am tired
of worrying about leaving my phone somewhere all the time. Losing your phone feels awful, and I would
certainly hate to lose mine – it would be painful to lose all of my contacts
and personal information that I have on there.
I can definitely see a mandatory kill switch for phones becoming popular
in the future, and if we are lucky, we should see phone theft become a thing of
the past. Already, many people have
caught thieves with apps like “find my iPhone,” but when that fails, they need
a kill switch to turn off their phone completely and prevent it from being
activated.
This
phone database being completed is a step in the right direction – the more thieves
that are deterred, the less phones will be stolen, and the less we have to
worry. Hopefully it will be more
successful than it was in the UK, but thieves will probably have to steal a few
phones first before they realize that they cannot be reactivated any more. One of the main issues with electronics has
always been theft, and it is important that we look for ways to deter
this. Hopefully, phone theft will soon
be a thing of the past.
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