August 21, 2013

Smartphones from Korea to feature Kill Switch to render devices inoperable if stolen

by Shayne Rana

Don’t you just hate giving a thief the satisfaction of simply resetting resting and reselling your stolen smartphone even if you were able to do a remote wipe via some app or OS installed feature? I know I do and I’m all for a Smartphone Kill Switch to be installed in any and all handsets that make it out from this day on. Just a few months ago government officials in the US states of New York and California discussed this very notion at a summit held with the big players in the mobile world – Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft. Picking up where they left off, the government in South Korea has already begun to implement this system in all new smartphones that make it out of their factories. An act called the “complete preventive measures against illegal use of mobile phones” has been enforced by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, whereby all handsets made in the country from today until the second quarter of 2014, would be equipped with a ‘Kill Switch’.


This system will really stick it to would-be smartphone thieves who would be left with nothing more than hunk of plastic and metal (depending on the device) as the handset itself wouldn’t just be erased of all precious data but would be permanently deactivated. The handset would become completely inoperable, even after formatting if it were to be reported as stolen. It would be a dud, to be succinct. While the bigger players like LG and Samsung will have to suck it up and accept the extra cost of adding this new set up to devices, some companies like Pantech have proactively been using the Kill Switch system since early this year.

Personally I would be quite happy to have this system on board my smartphone. Even with GPS locators on devices, the chances of the location based system being used and implemented by local authorities is slim at best in some countries and I would much rather have my device die a peaceful death rather than be traded off by some deviant.

[Via – Android-Authority]