Sometimes we are careless and sometimes plain unlucky, either ways the loss is ours as we get bereft of our precious device, the cellphone! A lost or a stolen cellphone can open a Pandora's box of trouble. First there is the issue of contact details and precious and sensitive data and then there's the cost factor as well. AT&T is probably on its way to working out an amicable solution to lost/stolen phones. They have certain patent applications that suggest at voice-recognition and location-specific cellphone security technologies. A system proposes to use a voice sample to ascertain whether the user was authentic or not. The voice sample would be "analyzed to determine a corresponding selection ID, and a voice print is retrieved from the storage location corresponding to the selection ID and to an ID of the wireless telephone."

Another security patent filed by AT&T suggests a security technology that would disable or completely lock a handset that roams too far from a pre-determined location, using a "short range wireless signal." AT&T visualizes a wireless network that uses signal-strength to determine when a device is taken further than allowed. The device eventually gets disabled once a strong enough wireless signal comes within range. A solace of sorts is that attempts are being made to protect data on the phones that could otherwise be misused by miscreants.

Source