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Anti-theft Handsets

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Handset loss is quickly becoming a huge consumer concern with roughly 1.2 million handsets lost or stolen every month in India. The issues of Data loss / theft and handset loss/theft have to be dealt with separately. Data protection technologies in PDA like handsets is ubiquitous for almost all major technologies like Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices.

Obviously enough, Handset manufacturers never had the motivation to introduce anti-theft technology that could potentially affect their overall sales- Especially in the low value handsets segment. Breaking the trend is Samsung with its provincially named Hero , that sends out SMSs to a pre-programmed numbers if the SIM card is switched in the phone. The SMS sent out contains the new SIM number which can be used for tracking the phone with the help of the providers.This is much better that IMEI tracking which involves a lot of red-tape and also the fact that most people are not aware of IMEI number at all.

3rd Party solution include ability to secure the data, wipe the data, render the phone useless. All theses solutions will have the same drawback that they are not programmed into the ROM and a tech-savvy thief can easily wipe clean the OS on the phone.

I haven't come across any solutions to prevent handset loss. I find this very surprising as some solutions easily jump to mind. For instance -

Electronic leashing: Your handset could be leashed to a receiver (kept safely in the wallet). If the device goes out of range ,the receiver module would emit an audible alert or vibrate. Bluetooth or Radio technology could easily be leveraged for this. This would eliminate half the instances of the handsets being left behind at restaurants coffee shops and taxis.

I love mobile phones for the freedom of movement, but not so much that my handset is free to move into another's pocket.

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