Thought that might get your attention 😉
Imagine the scene, you are on a bus /train/aeroplane/horse drawn cart or other mode of transport. You are minding your own business and get off without a care in the world.
A while later you go to get your phone and lo and behold it’s not there anymore. Here it comes…. the wild panic that you have lost your phone or worse it has been stolen. It feels like someone has hacked if a limb, your world crumbles and you become a self obsessed pity parade walking around screaming “Why why me…..”
Now if you were one of the Apple faithful then you’d simply log onto icloud.com at the nearest available computer and lock/wipe your phone thereby activating the built kill switch. Your troubles are partly over and you can crack on in the safe knowledge that your Candy Crush obsession will not be revealed to all.
What if you were a follower of less fruit based phones such as Android of Microsoft’s alternatives? Well at the moment you are not really covered as the phone can simply be reset and wiped then sold on for whatever it is the cool kids are sticking up their noses or into their arms these days. But the news is good as there is hope as today it was announced that both Google and Microsoft have stated that they are going to build this into their software moving forward.
Here is a section of an article from New York about the effectiveness of this is theft prevention over there..
An activated kill switch converts an easy-to-sell, high-value multimedia device into a jumble of plastic and glass, drastically reducing its street value
There are some concerns about the “Kill switch” being used to remotely disable phones but this is something that is being looked into, so worry not.
Here is a run down of how it could work…
-A “hard” kill switch would render a stolen device permanently unusable and is favoured by legislators who want to give stolen devices the “value of a paperweight”
-A “soft” kill switch only make a phone unusable to “an unauthorised user”
-Some argue that the only way to permanently disable a phone is to physically damage it
-If a phone is turned off or put into aeroplane mode, it might not receive the kill signal at all, warn experts