Laptops could soon be able to call home from anywhere

Jun 26, 2017 06:19 GMT  ·  By

Stealing a phone these days is a lot more difficult than it was 10 years ago, mostly because of security features that allow owners to track down their devices and to remotely send commands like locking or data wiping.

Apple is one of the companies that has focused a lot on anti-theft technology, and features like Find My iPhone are now widely adopted on a variety of phones, and it looks like Microsoft is also working on something similar for Windows 10 devices.

A patent that was discovered recently by MSPU indicates that Microsoft wants to equip Windows 10 devices, such as laptops, with a technology that would allow an owner to find them even when an Internet connection is not available.

The new feature is likely to be aimed mostly at always-connected cellular laptops, but pretty much any device with LTE support could benefit from it. Microsoft explains in the patent:

“At least some embodiments described herein relate to the restricted use of a cellular network to facilitate disablement of a device that is suspected lost or stolen. Accordingly, even if the device is not capable of general use of the cellular network (e.g., due to a physical authentication module, such as a subscriber identity module, being absent and/or due to a software restriction on cellular network access), disablement communications are still permitted across the cellular network.

Accordingly, the device may receive a disable command from the disablement service over the cellular network, and acknowledge processing of the disable command to the disablement service also over the cellular network. Thus, efforts by an unauthorized possessor of the device to prevent disablement by removing the physical authentication module are thwarted. Likewise, turning the cellular service off using software settings at the device also does not prevent the device from being disabled via cellular network communication.”

Find My iPhone improvements

In other words, with this feature, tracking down a device could work even if there’s no cellular network available, though it’s likely that Microsoft needs to sign a partnership with carriers across the world to make this happen.

Similar features have been in the works at some other companies too, including Apple, who has been looking into a way to improve Find My iPhone with tech that could work even when devices are turned off. Using a dedicated module that would stay in standby for low power consumption, phones could be able to connect to other surrounding devices connected to the Internet, and thus contact the owner to send its coordinates or other type of data.

Keep in mind that Microsoft’s new tech is still in patent stage, so there’s no guarantee it’ll ever see daylight, but given that the company is already looking into such features, certain improvements in this regard are likely to be released soon.