Government want to make phones 'thief-proof'

Home Office discusses thief-proof phones | The Register

The UK Home Office yesterday met with handset manufacturers and mobile networks to identify ways in which mobile phones could be “secured by design”.

Most of the ideas revolve around some mechanism for automatically shutting down a handset when it’s been reported stolen – sending a coded SMS or similar – but that opens up wonderful hacking possibilities when the secret code is broken, and given the blacklisting of phone identifiers (IMEIs) it’s not clear how often stolen phones are ever used.

If memory serves me right you can already block some Symbian phones via text? Another way to stop mobile phone crime is don’t take your mobile phone out with you. Taking bets on how long the Home Office will take to trumpet that one as their latest ‘great idea’ 🙂

Thanks to Steve for the tip on this one.