14 DAY TRIAL // Smartphone theft is a real issue in the world we live in today, and the fact that most of us tend to keep sensitive, private data on our mobile devices makes it even worse.
But in the last few months, city halls from multiple cities where the implementation of the “kill switch” safety feature into smartphones became mandatory have all reported encouraging results. Now a fresh report coming out of Forbes reveals that, starting June 1, all smartphones sold in the State of California will be legally required to have the kill-switch feature turned on by default.
Kill switches allow users to remotely lock and wipe their smartphones in case of theft. But some industry members like the CTIA-The Wireless Associations weren’t too supportive of the feature, pointing out that it might end up being used by hackers to fulfill some shady tasks. Later on, the CTIA reconsidered its position and allowed members to adopt a kill switch if they wanted to.
The kill-switch law is in full effect in California
But in California, state senator Mark Leno and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon took a firmer stance towards supporting the use of the kill switch. While the feature might come pre-installed in most smartphones, most users don’t know about it and don’t turn it on, they argued.
Hence, a bill that proposed to make mandatory turning the feature on by default was introduced. The document was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in August 2014 and started taking effect yesterday.
Even though this complicates things a little bit, as mobile devices being shipped out to California are going to bundle specific hardware, there’s statistical evidence that highlights the positive effects of implementing the kill switch.
Ever since functions like Apple’s Activation Lock and Android Device Manager were introduced, a sharp decline in smartphone theft has been reported. For example, in 2014, only 2.1 million such incidents were reports, which is 32% lower than 2013’s 3.1 million.
Still, it might take a while until we see the feature adopted at a large scale. Android’s Lollipop added an optional kill switch back in October. Back in March with the Lollipop 5.1 release, Device Protection, which entails signing into the last-used Google account after a phone has been wiped, was added.
But due to the nature of updates across diverse carriers and device manufacturers, the feature might take quite a while to make it onto all Android devices.