Archive for theft

Smartphone Theft Falling Due To “Kill Switches”

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 11, 2015 by itnerd

Good news. If you have a smartphone you likely have to worry less about it being stolen thanks to “kill switch” technology. That’s the ability for you to remotely “kill” the phone rendering it useless. Thus giving it no value to a thief. A story in Reuters highlights this citing New York, San Francisco, and London and their experience with iPhone thefts as examples:

The number of stolen iPhones dropped by 40 percent in San Francisco and 25 percent in New York in the 12 months after Apple Inc added a kill switch to its devices in September 2013. In London, smartphone theft dropped by half, according to an announcement by officials in the three cities.

“We have made real progress in tackling the smartphone theft epidemic that was affecting many major cities just two years ago,” said London Mayor Boris Johnson.

Johnson, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman were among numerous officials arguing for new laws mandating the kill switches.

In California, where a law mandating kill switches has yet to go into effect, smartphone theft is dropping because some manufacturers have already started installing the software-based switches on the devices they sell, Gascon said.

“The wireless industry continues to roll out sophisticated new features, but preventing their own customers from being the target of a violent crime is the coolest technology they can bring to market,” Gascon said.

Apple is definitely on the front end of this, but others are catching up. Largely because of laws requiring the implementation of such technology. That in my opinion is going to benefit all smartphone users whether you have a “kill switch” or not. That’s because thieves can’t tell from a distance if your phone has a “kill switch” or not. That makes smartphones as a whole less attractive. Still, you want to have a “kill switch” on your phone so that you can be assured that your personal info is erased should you be unfortunate enough to have your smartphone stolen.

 

Woman Gets Phone Stolen. Then Nude Selfies Appear In Her Dropbox

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on January 17, 2014 by itnerd

Imagine this. Your phone gets stolen and you report it to the cops. You then get the phone replaced and you go on with life. That’s what happened to Victoria Brodsky. Apparently her Samsung Galaxy S3 and her wallet were stolen at a street festival and she moved on when she got her phone got replaced.

Then this happens according to news.com:

For in her Dropbox she discovered images and footage of a naked couple. Brodsky herself wasn’t a party to this writhing party. The dates on the images suggested that they had been taken between the time her phone had disappeared and a replacement had arrived.

She had, indeed, linked her Galaxy with her Dropbox, and here were images of trouser-dropping carnality from another galaxy.

The lady and gentleman in question look broodily into the camera. As for the videos, Brodsky told the Daily News: “Sex looks very boring in their house.”

That’s right. It appears that the couple have been using the stolen phone which is set to auto load photos to Brodsky’s Dropbox account to shoot some nude selfies. This of course is getting all sorts of attention. Except from the police who will not act on this because she can’t prove that the frolicking couple stole the phone. I find that to be lame because at the very least, they’re in possession of stolen property which the last time I checked was illegal. Hopefully now that this story is going viral on the Internet, the cops will actually do something about this. Or the couple who’s pictures are now all over the Internet have the good sense to turn themselves in…. Assuming someone doesn’t turn them in.

Stolen Phone Blacklist Launches In Canada [UPDATED]

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on September 30, 2013 by itnerd

Starting today, stealing a cell phone will become a lot less enticing for thieves. The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association has launched a national blacklist program to stop cellphone theft. The program uses IMEI validation to validate that the phone in question has not been reported lost or stolen. Now this database can be useful to you as well. If you go to ProtectYourData.ca, you can use their web based tool to check the IMEI of any device you plan to buy off Craigslist, eBay, or Kijiji, That way you don’t end up with your pockets being significantly lighter and a phone that you’ll can’t ever activate. As a bonus, it also searches for the IMEI of a phone that was reported stolen in the US.

Finally, here’s a tip from me. You should not only report your phone as being stolen or lost, but you should make a note of what the IMEI of your phone is. It’s often printed inside the phone’s battery compartment or if you fish though the options of your phone, you can find it that way. That way you can do your part to combat cell phone theft.

Kudos to the Canadian wireless industry for finally implementing this. It’s something that is desperately needed in Canada to reduce if not eliminate cell phone theft.

UPDATE: This blog entry from Telus talks about how they were ahead of the curve in this regard.

Protecting Your Laptop From Theft

Posted in Products, Security with tags , , on February 25, 2008 by itnerd

Laptop thefts are on the rise, and if you have one you need to protect yourself. The question is, how do you do it? In my mind, you need to make sure that if someone steals your laptop, you can find it wherever it is (and maybe get the bad guy to boot). Also, an alarm system would be handy so that if you leave your laptop on a table in a coffee shop so that you grab another grande skinny latte, it will alert others to a theft attempt.

Two free solutions that I recommend are iAlertU for Macintosh and Laptop Alarm for PC’s. Laptop Alarm sets off an alarm to alert you any time someone tries to log off, shut down, or disconnect your power supply or USB mouse without entering your password. iAlertU goes two better by using the Sudden Motion Sensors built into the MacBook and MacBook Pro to set off the alarm and snapping a picture of the thief and e-mailing it to you. Cool stuff.

But if you want better security than that, you’ll have to pay for it. The best thing on the street at the moment is Lojack For Laptops. Available for both Mac and PC, Lojack For Laptops is comprised of software that is installed on your computer which works behind the scenes to silently and securely contact their Monitoring Center. If the laptop is reported stolen, the software reports its location using any Internet connection. Then the software company contacts local law enforcement and works with them to recover the laptop. They promise that if they can’t recover your laptop, they will refund the purchase price of the software. It’s probably advisable to read their end user license agreement (warning, PDF link) to make sure you’re cool with that.

I personally use iAlertU myself on my MacBook Pro, but that isn’t the only thing I use. I also use a Kensington cable to secure my MacBook Pro to a solid object in a coffee shop or sometimes in my hotel room if I am traveling. Seeing as most notebook (Mac or PC) have built-in slots that accommodate these cables, it is a worthwhile investment. These cables come as key based locks or as combination based locks so you can find the solution that works best for you.

Regardless of which of these solutions that you choose, the only true method of theft prevention is never leaving your laptop alone. That’s a free method of security that’s guaranteed to work.

UPDATE: I’ve recently installed Undercover For Mac on my new MacBook Pro after my last one got taken in a break in. It will not only lead cops to the thieves who took it by phoning home and taking pictures, but it will also disable the Mac so that it forces the thieves to take it into a repair center where it (hopefully) will be returned. For $49 USD, it’s cheap insurance.