Smartphone makers Apple, Google, HTC America, Huawei, Motorola Mobility, Microsoft, Nokia and Samsung and the U.S. telecom operators AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and Verizon Wireless have signed a new Anti-Theft Voluntary Commitment to agree that new smartphones manufactured after July 2015 and sold in the United States would have a anti-theft tool pre-loaded or available for download to remote wipe the smartphone data remotely and also kill the smartphone when required.
A federal bill that was passed back in February require all mobile phones sold in the state to include anti-theft technology. This move is to prevent thief from using the data on a stolen smartphone. Even though this would be present in the smartphones, this is an opt in feature and not enabled by default. So if users forget to enable it, this becomes useless even if the phone is lost.
This new anti-theft solution would also let other to prevent reactivation or factory reset attempts without authorized user’s permission and also reverse the inoperability if the smartphone is recovered by the authorized user and restore user data on the smartphone to a certain extent, such as restoring data from the cloud.
Apple introduced Activation Lock with the iOS 7 update that disables a stolen smartphone by preventing it from being wiped and reactivated without an Apple ID and password. Apple also already has Find My iPhone feature to lock the phone, wipe the data and also locate the phone. Google also offers a similar tool called Android Device Manager to remotely wipe your phone’s data.