Breaking the growing mobile phone theft cycle with a definitive Kill Switch

Mobile phone theft is a multi-billion-dollar global industry issue. From the moment a batch of new smartphones leaves the factory, there is a risk that they could be stolen.

The growing issue has been investigated by the Sunday Times highlighting that opportune theft is big business. Whether it’s snatch theft from an unsuspecting consumer in the street, porch pirates stealing devices delivered to homes or shipments themselves being intercepted in bulk, devices are vulnerable at every step of their life cycle. It is estimated that companies lose $76 million annually in the UK alone to cargo theft.

When it comes to helping stop the snatch theft cycle currently blighting our streets, our CEO Dion Price, explains that current anti-theft solutions are fairly straightforward to overcome with just a simple re-flash of certain devices. Clearly if they were as effective as we would all hope then the incentive for theft would have been reduced and the problem would start to fall.?

Trustonic can lock a device anywhere in the world within 30 seconds or less, with a robust solution that renders the phone completely inaccessible until released. Trustonic is looking to work with the UK government to advocate a proactive, industry-wide adoption of a centralised IMEI list of devices entering the UK. This would enable trusted and authorised partners to activate the Kill Switch should it be stolen and instantly disable the device, making it useless to the thief and acting as the ultimate deterrent.

Over the last 10 years, we have grown to become the largest and most secure mobile device locking provider globally.

Our technology has helped to protect 150 million devices on behalf of our operator, retailer and financier customers around the world, including 80% of tier one global mobile operator groups.

Ultimately industry inertia is fuelling the problem. If manufacturers enabled their device locking in the UK, it would remove the ability for the thief to unlock, reset or reflash the phone, thereby removing its value as an item for resale. If we remove the resale value of stolen devices, it will definitively reduce the thefts.?

Find out more at www.trustonic.com