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Smartphone Kill-Switch Could Save Consumers $2.6 Billion
itwbennett (1594911) writes "Creighton University professor William Duckworth has released a report finding that kill-switch technology that remotely makes a stolen smartphone useless could save American consumers up to $2.6 billion per year — mostly from reduced insurance premiums. Duckworth estimated that Americans currently spend around $580 million replacing stolen phones each year and $4.8 billion paying for handset insurance. If a kill-switch led to a sharp reduction in theft of phones, most of the $580 million spent on replacing stolen phones would be saved. And a further $2 billion in savings could be realized by switching to cheaper insurance plans that don't cover theft."
Remote wiping is already possible. What they want is centralized control over the functionality for governing purposes. We're not idiots. Well... not all of us.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Unless I'm the only one that can activate the kill switch in my phone, which is technically impossible.
Also the kill switch is meaningless unless it totally destroys the phone, since otherwise it will be circumvented by criminals and even if it should prove totally impossible to work around (which is impossible) there will always be a black market for spare parts.
The only thing this will do is open up an avenue to mess with other peoples phones by killing them.
In before all the people who say this will never work because:
a) Hackers
b) Government
c) Capitalists who *want* to sell you new phones/insurance.
No sig today...
A stolen phone is an opportunity to sell a replacement - and maybe persuade someone to upgrade and go onto a new contract. The stolen phones are usually sold abroad or to people who would not buy an expensive phone otherwise, so its not much of a loss - they might even use more data!
since when do our corporate overlords ever do anything that really saves the consumer money?
a study needs to come out how such a technology will save the corporations billions...then perhaps a change will be made.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
There are two ways such a kill-switch could go:
1.) It can be circumvented with sufficient effort and hardware access. Then it is useless as a theft deterrent.
2.) It cannot be circumvented. Then it renders the handset vulnerable to the malice or incompetence of whoever controls the killswitch, and thus useless.
Instead of sending everyone in a defined area a "registration" Message, you can simply kill all phones of the protesters. That way there will be almost no footage of police violence and such! Let's not forget that the batteries of police cameras are always empty when it comes to such point.
People never bring this up, but any phone kill switch only reduces the value of phones, but they are still worth stealing. I'm an iPhone guy and when I upgrade I sell my old stuff on eBay, and from looking at (recent) prices, iPhones and iPads that are "iCloud Locked" still sell for over $200 as "non-working, for parts". The main board on the phones is useless, but every other part is still almost new and worth quite a bit to fixed damaeged phones.
>> $580 million replacing stolen phones each year and $4.8 billion paying for handset insurance.
Whoa whoa whoa... If every person got insurance, that's over an 8x markup for insurance. Since many don't, it's even a higher markup.
Here's an easy way to save $4.3B - Stop buying the insurance.
Yeah, I think we should bake this in to all phones so that big brother can kill your phone whenever he wants to. It'll be really useful for making any anti-government protests hard to coordinate.
Bull Poo.
If insurance claims go down, the insurance companies will pocket the extra cash.
It won't be only your killswitch.
China, Saudi Arabia, lots of governments want this tech too. But not to help you.
The RIAA wants this tech too. But not to help you.
But go ahead, give up more and more and more control over your electronics, and see what happens in the end.
If I could have a killswitch for my phone that nobody but me could use, because I made the only key and never gave it away then I'll love to have one for my next Android device. Until then? No thanks. And you can bet your arse that generating the key and keeping it to myself won't be an option.
This doesn't add up...
If the carriers currently take in $2bn in theft premiums but only pay out $0.5bn in payouts, then they're pocketing a huge $1.5bn/year difference. Therefore
(1) We can expect them to lobby strongly against anything that will reduce this free money, and attempt to water down any proposed legislation
(2) If the legislation goes through we can expect them to try to gain that money in different ways, maybe with a "remote wipe services fee"...
Americans currently spend around $580 million replacing stolen phones each year and $4.8 billion paying for handset insurance.
At that factor of 8, folks, is why insurance is a bad investment. Americans could save $4.3B per year by not buying insurance with a poor ROI.
The annoying facet of this topic is the repetitious use of belief rather than actual data on whether this even works. Surely this regulation exists somewhere. I neither have, nor want, a phone.so I have no horse in this race. Ask yourself how many phones are going to be remote wiped and/or killed by silly users who "think" they have "lost" or had their phone stolen. Be interesting to see which groups are pushing, and who financing, this service. Cynical much? Why yes.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
This is not the answer! Cellphone carriers should not register stolen phones.
Soon, each citizen should wear at all times a helmet with an attached remote controlled pistol. Lol!
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
why would cell phone companies want to sacrifice $2.6 billion in income?
So long as the insurance companies are making, according to this study, $4.2 billion (minus whatever they pay out for damaged devices which certainly isn't anywhere close to $4.2 billion...), this kill switch will never happen.
Almost everyone in the chain from manufacturers to carriers to insurance companies make money from device theft so there's currently little incentive for a kill switch. There are some companies who buck the trend and protect their users from device theft but, for the majority, the money is simply too enticing for it to become an important issue worth tackling.
When there's a financial incentive to not act, expect inaction.
And you're an idiot if you do.
We're not consumers. We're citizens. And we don't want your fascist kill switch.
They think a centralized kill switch would be a FANTASTIC idea! Just brick the phones for anyone who dares challenge the state.
I can really see how this might be useful in the US. Instead of the IRS investigating tea partiers, we could just selectively brick their phones. Or if you swing the other way, disable those iPhones from all those annoying hispter Occupy protesters. Seriously, you have an iPhone and you complain about the 99%? You are the 1% globally.
If I lost my phone I cannot get them to tell me where it's at. Even if I have my account number, social, billing card number, etc (whatever).
No amount of that will prove to them that I am the owner and should be told where the phone is....
But if I call the cops and say that my daughter was kidnapped and the person took my phone. BLAM. The phone is at X. Guy = busted.
My phone's location can only be used to hurt me.... not help. I still have to explain to tow truck drivers where I am. I still cannot get any help with finding my lost phone....
But If I abduct a few kids or steal something shiny.... it will be used to catch me.
Kinda like how computerization of records only helps them share more dirt on you.... but they aren't about to use those resources to help YOU when you need some records sent to your new doctor. No that takes weeks and a million signatures....
The last time I had phone replacement insurance, I was paying almost $8 a month for it (I think that was with Verizon). I think I've used phone insurance one time in the 12+ years I've spent owning a cell phone. It seems absolutely useless for someone like me who puts the phone in a front pocket and actually takes care not to drop it or put it where it will end up in a toilet or sink or coffee cup or pool.
Combine dropping the handset insurance with the 50%+ savings that are had by dumping the contract carrier and moving to a "prepaid" carrier and you've got enough saved cash after four months (at ~$48/mo saved) to PURCHASE A TOTALLY NEW PHONE. Not a cheap crappy one either: I remember Virgin Mobile had Samsung Galaxy S2 phones for $200 and Galaxy S3 phones for $300 at one point, both of which are really nice phones.
As for kill switches...meh, just use the Android 4.x full device encryption.
That seems alarmingly high.
So at the mere cost of sacrificing all control over our ($700) mobile device and handling a remote kill-switch power to somebody (but who exactly ? the police ? a private corp ? my carrier luuulz), probably giving a freaking boner to Staline, we could save almost $3 billions ? that's like $10 per person ! freedom is so cheap zomg !
Best deal since that loss of privacy for free (constant) advertising Facebook tried to sell me some years ago.
Please die. Painfully.
You can't keep a phone in a safe deposit box and use it. But you can keep the phone's IMEI disable codes in a safe deposit box.
Databases already exist with stolen IMEIs. This will prevent those devices from registering on a carrier's network, rendering them wifi-only.
Both systems require the owner to report the theft, which you wouldn't do if your phone is >2-3 years old - value is > insurance deductible.
Since the existing systems are already not used, there won't be any change by any new system.
http://www.t-mobile.com/verify...
https://prod.eie.net.au/portal...
http://www.imei.info/blacklist...
The response is that thieves change the IMEI number (which can be hard). What is says is that any new system would have the same result - the thieves would change the identification number used to lock out the device.
I personally would propose a global "bad ESN" list that all carriers world wide are required to check before provisioning a new phone into their network.
All a thief really has to do is disable the iPhone's cellular radio and fence it as if it were an iPod touch, or disable a Galaxy S series phone's cellular radio and fence it as if it were a Galaxy Player.
Is anyone falling for this?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The retailer that sells the phone to the end user typically has a deal to promote one insurer. I don't see how insurance is so competitive when that insurer has such a promoting advantage.
How does having a kill switch suddenly mean I won't have to replace a stolen or lost phone? Is the professor really so stupid as to think cell phone theft would be a thing of the past? There's no insurance savings here. Plus, he didn't factor in the cost of purchasing new phones after they're bricked after being mistaken for stolen only to be found in the couch cushions later.
While the cellphone kill switch is a fascinating and debatable idea, with trepidation I am waiting for the first study for human kill switch devices. We saw those prototypes in the movie The Running Man. They no longer need to be intrusive and look like dog collars. They can be discreet and miniature like cardiac pacemakers. The kill switch needs not be messy and explosive: all you do is switch off the current. Human Kill switches have enormous potential. If widely adopted, billions of dollars could be saved. For all kind of fugitives from justice. For example, Mr Snowden would not be an issue, nor any stolen information in his laptop or his head. You no longer go the hard way through extradition, all you do is let the authorization not to explode unlast. Application opportunities are just... boundless: kill switches can be customized to have automatic Taser installed, for example. Or, another thought: there would be no need to have vehicle kill switches, because it would be possible to control the driver who is controlling vehicles. Police would have no need to carry handguns anymore, because you could carry remote controllers. We are talking not billions but trillions of dollars in savings here.
A kill-switch is an incredibly stupid idea. If it ever got implemented no doubt mischief would ensue. I would love to see politicians have to deal with them and their staff having their phones bricked daily.
Combine dropping the handset insurance with the 50%+ savings that are had by dumping the contract carrier and moving to a "prepaid" carrier and you've got enough saved cash after four months (at ~$48/mo saved) to PURCHASE A TOTALLY NEW PHONE. Not a cheap crappy one either: I remember Virgin Mobile had Samsung Galaxy S2 phones
Except isn't Virgin Mobile itself a "cheap crappy one"? Boost, Virgin, and Ting all use Sprint's network. And though I've had satisfactory voice service on Virgin for the past several years, I've read bad things about the quality of Sprint's data network.
You know, if humanity in general was as negative and paranoid towards every bit of technological change as the commenters on here trying to find every reason this won't work... We'd have never come out of the damned trees.
My iPhone 5 has a killswitch through the form of iOS 7 and my iCloud account. I like this. If you're so damned determined to believe that this feature will only be used by the government to oppress you, why do you own a smartphone to begin with?
This just in! Economist reports that kill switches on cars that allow for remote disabling, rendering the car worthless, would save consumers millions, mostly in insurance premiums. (Just give us more power already! -govt.[largecorp, inc])
Assumes that phone theft crime will stop (it will), but it will just be replaced by other crime. Look beyond the initial effects.
Oh, come on... I have also lost several items only to find them later, misplaced in the most obvious places. Of course, I have also attributed to theft some of my losses. I guess that I have misplaced my stuff more than once.
So, if thieves were to end up with a useless brick, would people lose less phones?
Do thieves only get phones to resell them (and not, say, take your contacts information, for blackmail and similar stuff?) In my country, there have been countless campaigns telling people not to fall for anybody saying "I have your daughter kidnapped", because they are most usually bluffing (and demanding for expedited money transfers, to which many distressed parents comply without first checking)
I seriously seriously doubt this US$580 million figure would be in any significant way reduced
You made me immediately think on the poor Lemmings looking at the decreasing counter on the top of their heads, only to grab their heads in distress upon reaching zero... Exploding in a gory feast of blood, leaving their poor mammal corpse for their brethen to remind them of their probable fate.
One of the cruelest games in game history. But, yes, one of the best ones as well.
Why ? This is ridiculous. Why insure a 300 $ device ?
Doesn't the existing Apple passcode with fingerprint solution solve this problem (I think Samsung is doing something like this, too)? It appears to me that the device is useless to anyone except the original owner, since it can't be unlocked, even after a wipe and a re-flash. The fingerprint makes the passcode not a burden to the owner.
Isn't that sufficient?
" mostly from reduced insurance premiums. "
Anyone that thinks an insurance company will reduce premiums is smoking some amazing good hallucinogenics.
Insurance companies will do everything in their power to RAISE premiums and not lower them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That is, the only way the phone can be "killed" is via the additional specification of a password that the user chose and had previously assigned to the device, and is not erased from the device when the battery is taken out or sim card replaced. When a phone phone receives the kill signal that is intended for it, if the password does not match what is on the device, the signal should of course be ignored, so that in general the only person who can remote kill the phone is the person who assigned the pasword for it. Changing the password would, of course, require physically entering the old one on the device. This would prevent anyone from being able to potentially kill somebody else's phone (barring successfully guessing the password, of course), but enable the end user to still remote lock their device if it should get stolen with at least some measure of confidence and security. Of course, if the device should get recovered, they should be able to restore it to its proper functionality by entering the correct password on the physical device, and if fairly strict limits (say up to three failed attempts per day) are imposed by the hardware in how many times you can retry to unlock the device after a failed attempt, then it is generally going to be impractical for a thief to attempt to brute force the password and unlock it in this matter. Obviously, if the remote kill also implements a remote wipe (which may or may not be overkill with this kind of system, I don't know), then the user would obviously still have to manually restore the data on their phone after such recovery. Such a locked device would not be usable for any purpose at all beyond calling 911, or whatever the emergency phone number is that is applicable to the provider and region.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Creighton University professor William Duckworth has released a report finding that kill-switch technology that remotely makes a stolen smartphone useless could saveInsurance companies up to $2.6 billion per year ...
I highly doubt any savings would get passed down to the consumer from the likes of an Insurance company.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
"Technological change"? We're negative and paranoid towards a legal change mandating the use of a specific technology. We are in favor of consumer choice.
We'd never have come out of the damned trees if the first ape to do so was forced to eat ants with a stick.
Don't let the fascists have another way to isolate you, enmasse.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Do you really think this will make insurance companies reduce their rates? They will just keep it the same and pretend they had to.
There is no guarantee that you will get the phone back, or that it will even be operational if you get it back, with this "magical" phone kill switch.
You most certainly can be be guaranteed it won't work if any of the globalists get whimsical and decide to shut it off. They WILL shut it off.
Furthermore, whatever system they implement most certainly will be wide open to hacking, that is something you can also count on.
My bank J.P. Morgan for example, regularly calls me about charges on my Credit Cards for my business because obviously their employees who do the I.T. work are selling the customer info on the side. (Get about 2 new cards a year now...I suspect I will be getting 4 cards a year shortly. Hell to have a bank monopoly isn't it?)
Same thing with this system. If you can shutdown all of Verizon's telephone customers for example, you could do what "anonymous" governmental agencies did before 9/11, short the stock just before you kill or cause a massive outage or customer disaster as I put it.
Hell, short Verizon, and go long on AT&T and Sprint!
I love the smell of Globalism early in the morning.
Take a nice big whiff.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
580 million is a small price to pay for not having to worry about your gear getting "rendered useless" by social engineers, hax0rs, oppressive governments and carriers.
Besides there are plenty of outstanding fellow citizens selling phone parts online (displays, touch sensors, batteries, housings..) less noble sort are still able to make money one way or another.
What TFA seems to be asserting IMEI blacklists and software features are not "good" enough... we need the kill switch to handle specific case of thieves selling their wares across international borders.
As for saving consumers money $2.6 billion collected for $580 million in payouts to replace stolen handsets is either a false twisted metric used by TFA to further an agenda or direct evidence of insurance racket showing petty thieves how real theft is done. You can't have it both ways.
Which is why they want it.
Every day, in every way, we become more and more like East Germany.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Note that Chicago has its own gun laws in addition to those of IL. Some have been struck down by SCOTUS but they are still considerably more restrictive than the state laws.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
People really need to do a true cost/benefit analysis instead of just reacting to whatever thought first pops into there head.
1. If the government wants to kill your phone access, all they have to do is get a judge to issue a court order to the major cell phone providers to block your phone's ID.
2. While the government cannot currently "remote-brick" your phone, exactly how would that capability be more prone to abuse than current technology? Other than the data stored on your phone, there is no difference between remote-bricking of users phones and direct manipulation of current cellular phone networks. If they want to shut off communication, they can order towers shut down or even specific users communication blocked using current technology.
3. This could potentially present some room for abuse. Hackers could potentially brick people's phones. However, hackers could potentially do a lot of other nasty things even without this technology. It would increase the chances of a nasty exploit, but it would also potentially decrease the usefulness and value of a stolen phone dramatically, which seems like a fair payout.
4. Carriers and manufacturers could make this technology standard, with the ability to opt out. This would give consumers who, due to their unjustified paranoia regarding the government, do not want this technology and easy way to avoid it.
So:
+Potentially cutting down or even eliminating many robberies, which in major cities these days, primarily consist of smart phone related violence.
+Giving consumers control over their own devices and denying robbers to easily turn over stolen property to a secondary market.
-The carriers or hackers could exploit this technology to disable your phone, especially if careful steps are not put into place to avoid abuse (don't pay your bill, your phone gets bricked).
All in all, the benefits far outweigh the costs. Polls show the consumers want this. It needs to happen now. Only greedy cell phone providers and unjustifiable paranoia stand in the way.
It is not necessarily a useless deterrent just because it could be bypassed with a mod chip, some solder, and some fine motor control skills.
I am a pretty big guy and I see walking zombies holding their phone out in front of them all the time. If I were a disreputable person, I could snatch about 90% of the cell phones I see (obviously avoiding the 10% of cell phone users who actually look like they are aware of their surroundings and big and strong enough to be capable of putting up a real fight), put it in my pocket, get into a waiting car, and just drive away. I have seen this happen at least twice . One time two teenagers waited until the train stopped, grabbed a smart phone from a short (5'6") East Asian woman and took off sprinting down the hill. Another time, a young boy grabbed a phone right out of a man's hands and was halfway down the block and approaching the subway entrance before they even realized what happened.
Do you think these are the kind of people who are going to be opening the phones up and disabling the security with clever soldering skills?
The benefits of smart phone theft is that it is a one or two man operation. You can steal the phone and then resell it on the secondary market yourself. With kill switches, even if they can be bypassed, you are going to have to get someone else involved, a person who will be used by a plethora of robbers, a person whom, unlike the street roaches that pop up everywhere, will be someone "higher up" in the crime ladder whom the authorities can focus on.
So, even if the kill switches are bypassed, they could still make it much easier for the authorities to go after smart phone crimes because bypassing the kill switches will likely be a much more centralized operation than the random street thugs who steal things and resell them on craigslist or the street corner.
It seems every other week some genius thinks he can solve the stolen phone epidemic with a magical "kill switch". These people need to be slapped repeatedly with a clue-by-four, because as long as phones have value as parts or can be resold to fools, they will still be stolen.
But okay, let's imagine for a moment that all cell phones are suddenly equipped with a kill switch that makes them disappear upon being reported stolen. So, you believe desperate criminal types who are mugging people for valuable electronics are simply going to throw their hands up and shout "Curses! Foiled again!"?
This kinda reminds me how Bitcoin fans can go on and on about how secure the blockchain is and how amazingly difficult it would be to game the system. So, of course, the criminals simply resort to good old fashioned scams and schemes to nefariously obtain Bitcoins.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Although not remote wiping as such, in New Zealand we have a system across all the major networks where when a phone is reported stolen, the IMEI number is barred from connecting to the networks.
People actually BUY that insurance???
What's your point?
A remote kill-switch on my mobile communications device is just what I need. While we're at it, I'd like one for my car too. And a remote-detonator for my vault of data backups.
Because of course nobody except me could ever trigger them, could they?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
If they're charging $2b for insurance premiums that pay out $580M, they stand to lose $1.5b a year.
The phone manufacturers stand to lose $580M as well, since they don't give theft replacements away for free.
They'll charge more for phones with the extra feature though, which will more than make up for their loss.
They don't. This is just some economist not realising that phone insurance is to cover those cases where an iPhone gets stolen conveniently as the next model comes out.
I worked at a retailer a while back whom had a number of Sprint phones. A guy I worked with stole a demo model unbeknownst to us. Sprint didn't worry about it. They just sent us a new phone. The guy attempted to activate the phone and got busted because sprint had the serial of the phone. Then went to jail.
My wife's phone was stolen and I hoped to see it returned or hear something from Verizon, but all they did was motion for cash for a new phone. So putting a stop to this is possible. However, the wireless companies apparently choose to look the other way when Joe Thug tries to activate a phone he stole and then could be said to be dealing with stolen property.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
It's called OS update
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I seem to remember reading a while back on Slashdot that countries other than the United States already have this and with good results.
Am I mistaken?
There is already social media software that can tell you where a phone is located.
Why don't the police just buy a batch of phones, install similar aps so the phones can be located, let the phones be "stolen" and bust up the organizers where the phones are collected?
See you here http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... you bigmouthed little nobody...
APK
P.S.=> Have the balls to show up there in the link above to reply to it (& NOT days later like you did, LONG after I left that thread!)
NOW, in the link above, I simply tore you apart in it vs. your "so-called 'points'" that you "amended" bogusly, changing your parameters/constraints there!
(& I am going to rip you a new asshole there YET AGAIN, publicly, for your BIG mouth you little shit - prepare to be utterly humiliated, publicly...)
... apk