14 DAY TRIAL // Smartphone theft is a real plague in the modern world and the fact that most people tend to keep their sensitive data on these small devices makes it even worse.
Some have to work with confidential files on their smartphones and not losing it to theft is of utmost importance. Not to mention that most of us are keeping family pictures, conversations or important mails on our devices that we want to be kept away from prying eyes.
In the last couple of months, city halls from multiple cities where the implementation of the ‘kill switch’ feature on smartphones is mandatory have reported encouraging results.
Back in June 2014, London’s city hall reported that smartphone thefts have dropped by 24% since Apple introduced the Activation Lock feature to its smartphones in September 2013.
Similar declines have been registered in San Francisco and New York where robberies related to smartphones dropped by 40% and 25% respectively.
It looks like the situation is improving even more since Google has added a soft “kill switch” feature to its smartphones that run Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system.
London’s Mayor Boris Johnson said that as of this month the number of smartphones theft has dropped by half.
Microsoft is now the only company that has yet to add a similar feature to its devices, though the company promised the next version of Windows Phone will add additional security options, including anti-theft features.
"Kill switch" is not a bullet-proof solution
However, many experts claim that this so-called “kill switch” feature does not entirely protects people and asks for a “hard” solution that would make stolen smartphones permanently non-usable.
The “kill switch” is a “soft” solution that’s based on signal, so when a thief switches off a stolen smartphone or enables the airplane mode, the owner can’t use the “kill switch” feature.
Still, some kind of protection is more than welcome, and as reports confirm, it has results over smartphone thefts. Hopefully, the situation will improve globally, so we won’t have to confront with this issue any more.