Deter Theft with GPS

December 2nd, 2008, by Rich.

Modern mobile devices (phones, PDAs, laptops, etc) could deter theft by all but the most hardened criminal, and it would only require the simplest of modifications to the firmware in many of the devices already on sale.

We were recently looking at an application called “Private-I” for the iPhone: it’s designed to look interesting to someone who’s stolen (or found) the phone. When they open the application, it cunningly says it’s “loading” things; but what it’s really doing is transmitting its GPS coordinates to a preconfigured email address. As the inquisitive thief waits in vain for the thing to load, the GPS fix gets better and better, so additional emails are sent, pinpointing the phone so you* can retrieve it.

It’s cute but in most cases it’s somewhat irrelevant because the amateur thief is not going to get through the access control system unless they get lucky (be it a PIN, a password, a biometric lock, or whatever). It makes sense therefore to dispense with the subterfuge of the cute application and just link the access control system of the device with a system for transmitting GPS coordinates.

i.e.

Each time the correct pin is entered, the phone unlocks.
Each time an incorrect pin is entered, the phone transmits its location.

This simple change won’t stop a professional thief (they can still break the device up for parts, or reset it to factory defaults), but anyone who finds a phone that’s been dropped or accidentally left somewhere will have a strong deterrent against trying to use it … what’s more all the police have to do is switch it on when it’s kindly handed in and the owner will know where to collect it.

Lesley Says:
December 4th, 2008 at 8:38 am

Sounds a bit like micro-chipping a dog?

Rich Says:
December 8th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

Sort of… it’s perhaps more like being able to teach your dog to lose all bladder control if it’s been fed by someone other than it’s owner more than three times in a row :-)

Lesley Says:
December 8th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

Ah yes!!! Good point…. except that the kind of person who takes and keeps someone’s dog, is liable then to mistreat it if it messes everywhere………. :-(

Maybe a better analogy would be the trackers fitted into motor homes…. which transmit their location if the vehicle is ever moved without the ignition key in place… eg if it were to be hoisted onto a low loader.

[Owners have to remember temporarily to suspend the tracker if they go on the train through Euro-tunnel, or on a cross channel ferry] ;-)

I could do with something to transmit the positions of many things to me every day… my keys…my handbag…. my library book…. At least I can use the house phone to ring my telephone when I lose that :-))

Ian Says:
December 17th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

It’s a great idea! How (thinking of iPhone here) could you prevent thieves from jailbreaking and deactivating the location detecting software? But if the IMEI cannot be changed (big ‘if’) and there would be some way to prove the phone hadn’t been tampered with to unwitting consumers, you remove the market for stolen devices and hence the incentive to thieve.

Still, I’m not sure I’d go chasing my phone if if got stolen and phoned home to tell me it had wound up on the streets of Baghdad…

Rich Says:
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:02 am

Jailbreaking certainly can’t be tackled by this solution (and neither can the old lead-off-the-church-roof problem of breaking the phone up for it’s parts), but small time thievery would be massively reduced. Once such systems are out there, the incentive to benefit from such ill-gotten gains would also reduce because people would start to be aware of devices that are likely to “phone home”.

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