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California initiates legislation to deal with mobile phone theft

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  • 08-02-2014 8:28pm
    #1
    Impetus
    Registered Users Posts: 1,667 ✭✭✭


    Mobile phone networks and phone manufacturers probably love (understatement) mobile phone theft. The mobile phone replacement after theft/loss market in the US is about USD 30 billion a year. Mobile phone networks sell almost USD 8 billion in "theft insurance" every year. Much of this "insurance" is like the banks with their mortgage protection policies or the electronic goods retailers with their extended guarantees... often a bit of a racket.

    Sen. Mark Leno has introduced bill 962 to add a provision to sec 22761 of the Business and Professions code (presumably similar to the Commercial Code in a European country using the civil law system) which will ban the sale of mobile phones and similar not fitted with a kill switch allowing the true owner to disable and wipe a stolen/lost phone from a remote location.

    It is time the EU had a similar directive in place!

    http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/sen/sb_0951-1000/sb_962_bill_20140206_introduced.htm

    Every mobile phone network should have a website (section) where registered authenticated users (send them a text message with a code when they register) where they can go to report a loss/theft of a phone. In which event the phone data (textos, email, phonebook, call history, etc gets wiped and the phone gets a factory reset, after which the SIM card is disabled).


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