Does your phone have a kill switch?
If your phone is stolen, will the thief gain access to your photos, your emails, your bank account? Should you have a way of remotely wiping your phone when you lose it?
Smart Phone owners sometimes ask if any software exists which would allow them to remotely wipe their phone by sending a special text message to it, to overwrite the operating system, and reduce it to a non-functioning lump of plastic. The common jargon for this is to "brick" it. Not only would it protect your confidential data, but it would also reduce the re-sale value of the phone to zero.
Such software does exist, but arguments against using it are that you shouldn't rely on it because a lot of these apps can be circumvented by a "hard reset", typically by installing a fresh copy of the boot code or a new SIM. Bricking eliminates the possibility of tracking it and catching the thieves, and if it turns out to have slipped down the back of the sofa it can be an expensive mistake. However, both Google and Apple have addressed the reality of stolen handsets and the current versions of both the Android and iOS platforms now include tools to remotely and securely lock the phone whilst still allowing it to be tracked, although you do have to have set up your locking password before the phone is stolen.
In August of this year, the state of California signed into law a requirement that all phones sold in California, from July 2015, must have remote locking installed by default and configured so that the user is prompted to set up a locking password as part of the initial set up. There is also a requirement in the bill that the kill switch must be resistant to a hard reset. I expect other US states will implement similar legislation, and in the UK and other European countries I expect it will become part of the industry code of practice rather than needing explicit legislation.
There have been objections to the bill, that this is part of some government agenda to enable police to disrupt protest rallies by remotely locking the phones of activists but the counter argument is that it would be a lot easier just to instruct the phone companies to turn off the cell towers. The Californian legislation does include a clause that it is illegal for anyone other than the owner of the phone to operate the remote kill switch.
As useful as bricking software sounds though, UK police have found one disadvantage. Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham and Nottingham police forces have all told the BBC that they have at least one example in the past year of seizing a mobile phone as evidence, only to find, when they came to examine it, that it had been remotely wiped.
22nd October 2014
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.