Anti-Theft Chip Kills Stolen Phones
from the better-than-an-explosion dept
Okay, so maybe we don't have to make stolen mobile phones blow up. It might be safer, and all around easier, just to make them stop working. Xilinx is selling a chip that will allow a user to call up an operator, say a password, and have them disable the phone remotely. This method also lets the phone's owner re-enable the phone if it's ever recovered. Of course, this doesn't give you the opportunity to injure the thief as well.
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Lost phones - it is a feature not a chip surely!
should be able to let the user turn off the stolen phone. But also to allow the phone to ring.
So it is lost the user alone will be able to make it
ring. so is is useless but the user can get it
back if found by a helpful person. The
other way would be to pay a small fee for mailing it
in. The reall deterent to stealing a phone is to
prevent too much traffic through it. Perhaps a limited
amount is possible each day and only the user knows the
code to allow more cell time.
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