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It's Time To Start Taking Stolen Phones Seriously
itwbennett writes "'Find My iPhone' is neat, but it's time for smartphone makers and carriers to stop pretending their anti-theft measures are anything more than minimum viable products, says blogger Kevin Purdy. He's not the first to point this out: As reported in Slashdot, 'NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said overall crime in New York City was up 3.3% in 2012 due to iPhone, iPad and other Apple device thefts.' And now San Francisco and New York attorneys general are calling a 'Smartphone Summit' where representatives from Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft are due to meet and discuss the implementation of a industry-wide 'kill switch' system."
When a phone is stolen, another phone gets purchased. Reducing phone thefts will cut into new phone sales!
industry-wide 'kill switch' system
It's really for stolen phones .. just like the kill switch for the internet was for emergency purposes. This has nothing whatsoever to do with cutting off people's means of communicating effectively with each other.
The NSA is listening in on everything anyways, why aren't they arresting phone thieves when they use the phones?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
The best best for Android is Cerberus. Seriously, it does everything that "Find my iPhone" does plus a few things it will never do. It's free today through AppGratis http://www.droid-life.com/2013/06/06/deal-cerberus-lifetime-license-is-free-today-from-appgratis/
If you happen to have a rooted phone, there's even a ROM version which will survive a Factory Reset.
The solution can only be good if provider are the one who are force to fix the issue. You need to realize provider will allow stolen phone on their network until they are force no do to so. The main reason that explain this is that they already lost the phone, if they don't reactivate it to the person who bought it on the street/pawn shop/craigslist, the profit that could be made on this phone is lost forever...
They will know exactly where that bad boy is and who the theif is calling...
It's Apple's fault that NYC is a crime ridden shit hole. If these disgusting companies would stop making products that people actually want New Yorkers wouldn't have to resort to robbing each other! Why can't Apple and Google be more like Microsoft!
Why can't they just blacklist the phone's IMEI?
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
After a $150 deductible
Burn FAT not OIL
cut them off at the network... NYC are talking to the wrong people they need to speak to GSM and CTIA.
they do it in Europe as well the USA is very slow about this...
" Carriers AT&T and T-Mobile offer a joint database, as the carriers use the same basic networking technology. Verizon and Sprint offer a second database. By the end of November 2013, the four carriers will combine databases, and adding smaller carriers like Nex-Tech and Cellcom. Plans exist to link the US database with an international version hosted by the GSM Association to prevent stolen phones from being shipped to overseas markets and used on other networks."
The phone is bait. It should commonly lead you to criminals who have done other illegal things. A super hero who retrieves phones just so he can honeypot get to the criminals would be legit. All he'd need to do is use GPS, then call the phone when he's in range and have a conversation with his prey before closing the distance and kicking tail.
I understand why real cops wouldn't want to retrieve phones. It would be easy to spot, but they would be encountering possibly violent criminals more often. No one wants to die even if they're doing their job more effectively.
God spoke to me
You could have stopped right there. That alone would have negated a lot of the incentive of stealing phones in the first place.
That rings far too much like "guilty until proven innocent".
It's stolen property... handle it identically to that. The possessor surrenders it to the authorities at their own expense.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
... Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft are due to meet and discuss the implementation of a industry-wide 'kill switch' system."
Soon to be highjacked by the job-creating content industry.
Oops, sorry, looks like you'd better stop pirating Mickey Mouse from 75 years ago if you want to make that emergency call!
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
I am from a country where all the operators adhere to the CEIR blacklists. Phones are blocked by IMEI, and it is not necessarily trivial to change the IMEI on modern phones. The problem is that most users who have their phone stolen do not bother (or know how) to blacklist. Just reporting the phone stolen does not automatically blacklist it, one has to fill out a separate form for that. If something was done so that close to all stolen phones are blacklisted, stealing a phone would immediately become a lot less lucrative. At least from my experience in Norway, phones are stolen to resell locally or for the thief to use. Effective blacklisting would make sure that stealing a phone would only be feasible for anyone who would send them to a country where blacklists are not enforced, or someoene with the equipment and knowhow on changing IMEIs. This would pretty much rule out petty thiefs.
Dvorak on Doomtech
If you wallet is stolen, you don't expect to get any cash in in back. If your watch in stolen, or your TV, you should not expect to see either again.
And if your phone is stolen, like every other object on the planet, you most likely will not see it again.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I hope that their bold plan merely involves IMEI blacklisting(though, if so, why are they inviting handset makers, rather than bitching at the telcos?); but if the demand is being made at the handset vendors, I get a sinking feeling that it might involve some sort of client-side software that is designed to be impossible to remove/circumvent. I'm sure that the vendors would implement that in way totally unproblematic for people who want to root/jailbreak/run custom ROMs...
Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft
According to This site iOS has 59..49% of the market and Android 24.4% in the US. Windows Phone (1.21%) is being beaten out by BlackBerry (1.64%), Symbian (2.06%, and Java ME (10.2%). Very few people are buying Windows Phones, so how much of a market is there for stolen ones?
When a phone is reported lost or stolen the MEID and the SIM card # are added to a list and cannot be used on the VZW network. Often though the first thing a
competent thief will due is turn the phone off preventing any GPS locating software to track the phone. The phone will either be sold to a person who does not
check the MEID # (and when they try and do an ESN change will be told the phone is on the lost stolen list and to please take the phone into a VZW Corp. store.)
Or they take the phone someplace like Cricket and they will flash the phone to work on the Cricket network. Another option is the phone will be parted out.
Yes, the phonemaker gets more revenue. However, the money used to fund those replacements comes from an increased levy on all phone purchasers who have coverage. So everyone with coverage pays more for phones. The extra money that everyone pays for phones means less money spent on all other possible purchases. So Apple's revenue increase is Krogers' or Target's or Shell's decrease.
We usually disregard widely-distributed costs and look at local effects. This is especially true of politicians. But those effects are real and directly affect the aggregate economy numbers.
Given that we have such tools, why would we even need a kill switch?
You may not need it. The manufacturers do... every stolen and non-killed phone is a lost sale. Pretty much like pirating music or a movie, isn't it?
(ducks)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
If you have nothing to hide, AND EVERYONE YOU KNOW has nothing to hide, perhaps you'll be fine.
Well, what you need to hide changes as the government changes. Something perfectly okay to normal people may be considered evil by the government. 'Nothing to hide, nothing to fear' truly is nonsensical, as you said.
I own a microsoft powered phone, no one wants it
What happens when "hackers" get hold of this kill switch?
don't flash your iphone around any place you wouldn't be comfortable flashing around a handfull of hundred dollar bills.
The problem is that you shouldn't be flashing handfuls of hundred dollar bills anywhere public.
One of the major advantages of these devices is to use then anywhere, even if you do not use them as phones.
Hell in Chicago you can access CTA vehicle information --including when the next vehicle is approaching your stop via internet. But the stop is almost certainly a bad place to flash your device.
Such as
causing injury to criminals,
Absolute Software has been in the business of tracking and recovering stolen computers for years. They've recovered nearly 29,000 stolen computers, and they've just expanded to phones - Samsung has just integrated their technology in the firmware level on the S4, with other devices coming soon. Their tracking agent will survive a phone reset and their forensic tools (deployed post-theft) mean that they can actually catch the guy that knocked you over the head and stole your phone.
http://www.zdnet.com/new-lojack-solution-for-galaxy-s4-makes-theft-meaningless-7000016433/
Unlike a software solution only, the Absolute Software LoJack system is both a hardware and software solution. Starting with the Samsung Galaxy S4, Absolute's persistence technology is built into the firmware of the S4 and cannot be removed, even if the device is restored to factory settings.
The Galaxy S4 has the technology built in now, but the necessary Absolute software solution is not yet available. When it is available, you will be able to remotely lock your device, locate it, erase the data from the device and storage card, or have the Absolute Investigation and Recovery Services Team attempt to recover it.
The Recovery Team is made up of experts from law enforcement, the FBI, the Marines, the US Army, and other government positions. To date, they have recovered 28,000+ devices (laptops and PCs) in over 95 countries.
As if anyone's hard-up enough to steal an Android or Windows phone. "iPhone, iPad and other Apple device thefts"
look, stealing is nothing different than a form of planned obsolescence.
every business school teaches planned obsolescence and how to use it to maximize profit.
now, lets imagine that you have a product where there is lower planned obsolescence. is that good or bad for your profit? thats right, its bad.
now lets imagine a product that gets stolen a lot vs one that doesnt. which one is more like planned obsolescence? Thats right. the stolen product. its good for profits.
a corporation that is interested in making a profit is actually practicing mismanagement when it implements a high quality anti-theft system.
Cell phone manufacturers and service providers make money from stolen cell phones. When someone has to replace a phone they always get a newer model, and this is often tied to a new contract, which is where the carrier makes their money. Providers also make money on the stolen phones once they are in use. The proof is in the behavior of the manufactures and providers. They have done as little as possible to address the issue. That's why law enforcement at the local level is the agent of change. It's local police who are calling out the phone industry.
This is no different then Big Pharma and prescription drug abuse. It is certain that they know how much of their production goes to illegal use, and they do nothing to match supply to legitimate demand. Once the pills go out the door, they wash their hands of all responsibility. No matter how much they publicly pretend to oppose drug abuse, they do everything they can to keep the status quo in place. They profit from a distribution system that makes it easy to divert drugs. Drug regulation falls on the states, where enforcement targets doctors and pharmacists who cater to addicts. This is a system doomed to fail, as evidenced by the huge explosion in addiction to prescription drugs. Meanwhile the corporate executives get good citizen awards for sponsoring local little league teams.
This is endemic to all big corporations. Sometimes they have deniablity like drug companies. Other times they just buy legislation and make their illicit behavior legal. Can you say EULA? No sane person would by a car if it it had similar take-it-or-leave-it liability.
There are plenty of other examples. Wall Street runs on corruption. It's all over the military industrial complex. Agribusiness has used gene patents to extort money from farmers who's neighboring crops have been contaminated by GMO cross pollination, which they initially said couldn't happen. It's hard to find a sector of the economy that doesn't work this way,
Why is Snark Required?
if the killswitch is built into the os then you can't replace the os(or the killswitch is no good). then you need also a system for transferring rights on who has access to the switch.
besides.
now here's an important bit..
there is ALREADY a banlist for stolen phones! it blocks by phone imei.
the iphones are valuable as parts, so even that does nothing to curb stealing them. now if there wasn't a market for iphone parts...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
What does Microsoft have to do with smartphones or theft?
WhatMeWorry!
well.. a 3rd party cannot develop a wipe app for windows phone.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Perhaps a decade ago, makers of GSM phones here in Europe advertised intensely for the ability to kill stolen phones using the IMEI number. Basically they stated that if your phone got stolen, all you needed to do (besides filing a police report) was to report it to the carrier. They could block the IMEI number in an international database, so when the phone was turned on it would either be rejected from any GSM network or downright be bricked.
But it turned out that not only was the support for the database lacking - most of the East-European countries, as well as the Middle-east and South America - didn't use it at all, allowing stolen phones to be used freely - the supposedly immutable IMEI number could relatively easy be altered as well.
In order not to repeat this, the new system must be carrier-independent as it seems certain regions are so saturated with stolen phones that blocking them would take away maybe 80-90% of these carriers revenue. The new system must use the standard protocols on the mobile networks and be able to disable any phone connected to any carrier without the carrier being able to prevent this. The disabled phone should display a message about the phone being stolen. who the rightful owner is, perhaps offering a reward for the return, and the ability for the owner to unblock the phone using a code shipped with the phone if he/she got it back, something like a PUK code for the phone itself. Perhaps the code also could be used to block the phone in the first place, avoiding the need to involve carriers etc.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
A phone cut off from the network wont receive the wipe command from the MDM (Mobile Device Management).
Its as if this was rocket science or something ...
You know you can remote wipe it ... BEFORE they blacklist it ... right?
In Europe, if all German carriers block a stolen phone, they'll just hock it over the border in Poland.
Except they won't ... because they share the same database ... and thats the point, the US will be doing the same, and joining the GSM association database so that you can't take an American phone to Germany either.
This wont be that much harder from the US given things like Ebay and cheap international shipping. Also you're seriously underestimating the number of suckers out there who will buy "Cheap Iphone, Network unlocked (not lying)".
And Ebay will put an end to that when they get tired of refunding paypal transactions for stolen phones.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
3G and LTE networks already supports blacklisting IMEI numbers of stolen phones.
Has worked for decades in Western Europe.
In most nations with a high rate of criminals and stolen goods, the telecoms decide to ignore the international IMEI blacklist. So a phone stolen in Western Europe can only be used in Eastern Europe, USA and other 3rd world countries. If the telcos where to shut down stolen phones, they would lose half of their subscribers, the teclos really like the availability of low cost (read stolen) feature and smart phones. They profit at least as much as Apple.
Apple earns around 35% on the sale of an iPhone. The iPhone 5 = $649. Apple profits $227.
If AT&T sells the same phone, they probably buys it around $400, sells it for $199, and loses $200. If a stolen phone is sold to a customer, AT&T does not lose $200, but will get the future income from the phone. Dataplnas and all. It is the telecoms that makes the most profits. They should implement stolen IMEI blocking worldwide. Even in the US.
You mean, you have to wait until the device checks in before you can wipe it.
This is not rocket science.
It's almost as if you made that statement with no knowledge of how these systems work.
Never been to Europe.
That was a statement, not a question. Germans cant even get stolen cars back from Poland, so much so they never even bother trying to change or even obscure the VIN and engine number.
Even then, if Poland isn't far enough, try Latvia or Romania or Russia. Once outside the EU, your fucked. Even inside the EU you're still pretty fucked. Besides this, do you honestly think US and Canadian telco's will share info? What about Mexico, Panama, Dominican Republic... Lets not even consider states that aren't friendly with the US like Cuba.
No, they wont.
Why, because a buyer in Brazil or China doesn't give a crap that it's stolen because it wont be locked in their countries.
This entire idea fails because it puts too much faith in criminals following instructions.
Also, carrier locks are country based. I can buy a phone locked to AT&T in the US, bring it to Australia and it will work on every telco here. Legitimately.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
What magical part of the world do you live in where there are no thieves? I'm seriously interested, I would love to live somewhere like that, but I'm fairly certain neither it nor Peter Pan actually exist.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Police should try and catch the thief and return the phone to it's owner. GPS won't work, unless the thief has switched it on. Cell tower information would probably be sufficient enough to get near the thief. If word gets out that teams of cops are actually on full-time phone retrieval duty, thieves are going to be a lot more cautious about stealing phones. The reason this happens so much is that the chance the thieves get caught is way too low.
Blocking the IMEI means the thieves will change the IMEI on the phone. Yes, they figure out how to do that and for most not-so-recent phones there is a black market where you can get that done. For the popular new phones, it usually will get done soon after the phone gets on the market. It's a software/firmware thing usually, so IMEI blocking is not sufficient. If there is no software solution, often the baseband chip gets replaced, or the phone gets exported to a country that doesn't use foreign IMEI blocking lists. I'm fairly certain that thieves will find a solution for the kill-switch too, given time.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
You are correct, except for the fact that carrier locks are country based. They are not (I think they are bound to MCC+MNC of the IMSI), in fact this is how most people learn their phone is locked, they go abroad and try a local prepaid SIM.
this does not lead to an increase of cases where the thief invokes the "kill-switch" of the victim first. The problem with people who make laws is that they think criminals have the same line of thinking as them.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
We all know there is no security without physical security.
But let's forget about that for a second.
Even if you make it ueber-secure (not like today when in many Samsung devices the IMEI is actually in some obfuscated file in the efs partition!) and you really manage to bound each device to an IMEI you still have the challange of managing the blacklist/"nuke from the orbit" authorization list.
It costs 5-10-15EUR to send a box full with phones across Europe, and no customs at all if it's within EU.
You need to have (at least) EU-wide database. How do you manage that? What recourse you have if you bought your phone in Germany, you leave in Belgium and it gets blacklisted by an operator in Bulgaria based on some typo from a dodgy police station in village? How can you argue that (hint: they don't even use the latin alphabet in Bulgaria)?
We had enough of this country-coded DVDs and network locked phone and all the crap. Any more of this and will give (another) unfair advantage to your operator: the only safe phones will be the ones bought directly, they know for sure it's legit. Anything else is a risk.
The real way out here is just to have police go after the thieves. Even the older phones could be tracked well enough and with some social engineering (if you had access to the list of calls) you could find out who has the phone without any GPS or camera and whatnot. However, they just don't bother even if you give them the position of the phone within meters, inside a single-house and a picture of the user.
Having just purchased a stolen phone on ebay (the Police are looking into it), and having now read up on how easy it is to sell a stolen phone in the tat bazzar, it does seem to be ebays problem, as they are not doing enough to stop it. For starters sellers should have to register the IMEI number with ebay who automatically check it against the stolen list before it goes up for sale. When reported stolen the phone is locked it all countries not just the UK.
But it is also down to the owner for not securing it using the phones security features, and also keeping the £500 item safely locked away. Waving a wad of £500 around in the air in the middle of a busy street is asking for trouble yet plp do it with $700 iphones.
But it is also down to the owner for not securing it using the phones security features, and also keeping the £500 item safely locked away. Waving a wad of £500 around in the air in the middle of a busy street is asking for trouble yet plp do it with $700 iphones.
And now San Francisco and New York attorneys general are calling a 'Smartphone Summit' where representatives from Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft are due to meet and discuss the implementation of a industry-wide 'kill switch' system."
As other posts have pointed out, all the technology is already not just available but deployed.
IMEI blocking and both OEM and 3rd party apps which can encrypt, track, remote wipe.
Of course, most of these suppose that the user opts in or activates in some way, but I think I'd prefer that than a mandatory, Govt.-sponsored option.
It would probably work just as well as those fantastic 'smart' programs that block your credit card "for your protection" whenever you visit a new country.
I can see it now, message appears on your screen when you get off the plane, "you have visisted an unauthorised destination...bricking phone for your protection"
Europe blocks the IMEI number of the phone. Granted, on some phones it is possible to change IMEI, but it is neither simple nor easy. It also carries a significant prison sentence in the UK. Once IMEI is blocked, provided the phone providers respect the shared blacklist (which virtually all do) then that phone is not going to connect to a network, regardless of what SIM you have in it. Thus it becomes worthless. Seems pretty simple, TBH.
It's not enough you can remotely wipe your phone, you need to remotely set it on fire.
A machine that offers cash for a phone on the spot is certainly not going to drive down phone thefts.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
A lot of Japanese phones will disable all functionality if they don't connect to the proper network with a valid SIM. If you don't pay you Bill, it turns into a paperweight. If you leave the country for too long, it turns into a paperweight. If you report it stolen, they block it from the network and it turns into a paperweight immediately. If you remove the Sim card, guess what happens? Yeah, it turns into a paperweight. This includes Softbank android phones made by SHARP. They are nice phones, but I can't even get to the address Book in my old one.... And no, they basically can't be hacked. It's not like people haven't tried. Now, there are good things and bad things about this system. The good thing is that anyone who steals your phone basically only ends up with a high tech paperweight. The bad thing is that you have even less control over your own phone and your phone will basically self destruct if hacked.
You could have stopped right there. That alone would have negated a lot of the incentive of stealing phones in the first place.
That rings far too much like "guilty until proven innocent".
It's stolen property... handle it identically to that. The possessor surrenders it to the authorities at their own expense.
Note that, in most jurisdictions, possession of stolen property IS a crime, regardless of whether or not you actually know that the property is stolen. If the DA is very busy, or honestly believes that you did not knowingly purchase stolen property, you will just lose said property. If they think you should have known, you may very well be faced with criminal charges.
Rather than respond to everyone, I'll try to summarize. The grandparent implied there was no money in the marginal business of providing replacement phones for those that are stolen. I am not saying that selling replacement phones is $Phonemaker's only business. I doubt that it equals their main business. I am saying that every extra sale -- defined as two phones to the same customer -- is "found money" in that there is no other way they would make this revenue except for someone being held up at knife point on 5th Avenue. And so, most importantly, $Phonemakers have zero incentive to stop the flow of "found money". It is going to take (1) a third party stepping in to put a stop to this deliberate inaction because $Phonemakers would have to be out of their minds to stop it on their own or (2) $Phonemakers finding a conscience.
I come here for the love
Why would they "spend MANY thousands of dollars of taxpayer money on investigation, arrest, booking, court hearing/trial, and imprisonment for a $500 piece of electronics" when they could spend MANY thousands of dollars of taxpayer money on investigation, arrest, booking, court hearing/trial, and imprisonment for a $10 bag of weed?
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Of course... and there's absolutely no reason I can think of to handle stolen cell phones any differently than this.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I had a couple iPhone 3GS that I didn't want anymore, so I tried one of those ecoATM things once. They do require a scan of a drivers license as a form of ID, for whatever that is worth. But the big issue is how much they lowball the offered price compared to what you can get almost anywhere else. The machine offered $20 each for the 8GB phones (in near mint shape), so I declined the offer, and sold them myself on eBay for a bit over $100 each.
Even a desperate thief should be able to find a place to fence a stolen phone that gives them more money than those scam machines...
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If my wallet is stolen, I lose under a hundred bucks, and some plastic which I'll have to re-order.
I'll also have to go through some annoyance in getting my driver's license re-issued (I think about $15) and various health/rewards cards, so let's say maybe a few hundred bucks of hassle. The thief may get a few twenties in cash, and if he's lucky get away with using the stolen plastic before it's cancelled without getting caught.
Your average current-gen smartphone runs around $550-750+
Not only does it cost you more, but the incentive to steal it for easy money is greater.
Again, you need to solve that cultural issue too. And effective policing isn't where crime is eliminated.
And, you can always just leave. It's not like new york city is underpopulated.
you already tried that. it failed.
In a suburb 50km outside of toronto, in a small city with 150'000 people, adjacent to another small city with 125'000 people, outside of the big city with 6 million people, on a street where I know everyone's name. The way we stiffle crime around here is by hiring your neighbour's children to do odd chores like garden work and snow shovelling before he reaches the age where he might decide to annoy his neighbours. That's about it. We rarely even lock our doors.
Again, police don't modify cultures. That's exactly your cultural problem. You're thinking way too late.
And lots of people have thought of this before. I live in a country that does exactly that. Which is why my neighbourhood lives with doors open and alarms disabled.
You might want to try looking outside of your screwed up country for a change. You'll find that a lot of people don't have your problems at all.
Here's the thing that annoys me - Apple *already* has this technology for all Mac computers built after 2011.
There's no way to override the firmware password on newer Macs - you used to be able to do all sorts of tricks like removing a memory module, or manually accessing the NVRAM parameters. Now owners need to press the "secret keypress" (or bring to an Apple authorized retailer), read an encrypted keycode off of the monitor (probably based on the current password and the hardware ID of that particular system), go into the Apple store and prove you're the owner, and Apple Employees contact Apple HQ to generate an unlock USB key for you.
It would be exceedingly simple for them to implement the same thing in phones. Phone locked? Need to bring to an Apple store to prove ownership before unlocking (probably also wipe the filesystem encryption key, so the phone's contents are not revealed). Make it check the lock status in firmware as part of the bootloader so even a manual DFU needs to unlock first to prevent smarter thieves from just re-flashing the phone (come to think of it, with the new firmware security and signed blobs, this should already be possible - if a phone is reported stolen, simply refuse to sign a firmware-blob for reflash).
A "half-way" position would be to allow the phone to unlock if you connect it to a computer you've synced with.
To encourage people to use the lock (who typically don't like unlocking every 15 min or whatever), have a minimum requirement to enter the password once whenever the phone starts, so while someone may still steal your phone, if it's ever turned-off, battery runs out, or is reset, it requires the unlock code be entered.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
This issue has already been addressed. The Galaxy S4 has hardware for LOJACK. Even after a factory reset. here's a link http://www.zdnet.com/new-lojack-solution-for-galaxy-s4-makes-theft-meaningless-7000016433/