Security for your Phone

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Phone neutraliser

Today's cellphones carry a wealth of personal data and can even act as mobile credit cards. But they are all too easily lost or stolen.

Fortunately, Keith Cocita of California, US, has come up with a way to prevent valuable information kept on a phone from falling into the wrong hands. If a handset disappears for any reason, the owner simply calls it up and enters a secret code. This triggers the phone to wipe its internal memory, along with the contents of its SIM card.

Such a feature could potentially be misused, of course, or the phone might just have slipped down the back of the sofa. So to prevent a needless loss of data, the phone's charging cradle maintains a full record of all personal data kept on the device while charging the battery overnight. That way, the next time the phone, or its replacement, is charged up it will automatically be loaded with all the deleted data. Simple.

Read about the phone neutraliser patent here.

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It's the one under Burning Bullets...

http://www.newscientist.com/article....ine-news_rss20
New Scientist Breaking News - Invention: Burning bullets

What i know is that the first thing that people who steal phones do is to switch it
off, and completely take it apart. Any how the information is still stored in the battery,
it can be retrieved.

Cell providers have had the ability to kill stolen mobiles for ages. They just don't, for some reason. At least over here that is. They tend to just block the stolen SIM.

They have the ability to kill the phone using the IEME <(think thats correct). It's not full proof though as it is possible to change the phones IEME number.

There's to many problems associated with the company doing that though. If they do it and it turns out the person just lost it they might try to sue, or other responsability associated things. This way the user is responsible for clearing their own phone and all that good stuff. Less liability problems. Pretty cool invention though.

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Any how the information is still stored in the battery,
it can be retrieved.

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That doesn't make any sense...
If you could compile your own kernel for the phone, you could use this one kernel mod for encrypting at the loopback (does ROM and HDD). Neat stuff.

Once people get wind of the default password for the erase feature on the phone there is going to be some phone fun going on....

Well thats not IEME its IMEI no. Whenever a user calls from a cellphone along with the no. of the cellphone its imei no. also gets aired to the operator. That is why the cellphone with other sim can be traced if stolen and is in use.

This technique can be a good one provided that the telephone is still workin after being stolen (u cant call if its off). Moreover soon there will be ways out to find the data stored with the battery (Where there's a will theres a way).

You can see your IMEI number by typing *#06#, also this can be easily changed for
a few bucks.