Archive for June 10th, 2008

Automatic Alerts From Stolen Gadgets

Published by Babar Bhatti on June 10, 2008 under Telecommunications

I came across an interesting piece in the media about dealing with phone and gadget thieves. Idea is to trigger an email or multimedia message when the ownership is compromised such as when an unauthorized SIM is used in the phone.

Reuter reports that GadgetTrak, based in US, sells software products that can be loaded onto phones, laptops, iPods etc. If a BlackBerry, for example, gets stolen and an unauthorized SIM is placed in it, the software grabs information from the new user’s SIM data card and e-mails it to the rightful owner. I know what you are thinking - this is not going to work in Pakistan. First thing, Pakistani consumes change SIM cards so often that this approach may very well cause unnecessary false alarms.  And given the law and order situation of Pakistan, even if you knew exactly who has the phone, what are you going to do about it?  

On a related note, I am not sure how the software determines that a laptop or ipod is stolen. This article has another interesting story where a digital camera was stolen. The user had setup his camera for auto uploads of pictures.  The culprits proudly took their photo and that ended up on the owner’s PC along with the baby photos.  Yeah that is one of the advantages of connected devices!