Forty-five percent of those 2013 victims never recovered their stolen devices. In 2013, 3.1 million Americans had a smartphone stolen, nearly twice as many as in 2012, according to a Consumer Reports survey. MORE: 10 Best Apps for Finding Lost Smartphones The theory is that the kill switch will kill the incentive for smartphone theft by making sure that stolen devices can no longer be factory reset or resold - anywhere in the world. Its proponents believe that a smartphone kill switch would be a magic-bullet solution to the skyrocketing rate of smartphone theft. Why might we need a smartphone kill switch? All specify that the kill switch should be free for consumers. supported that implementation.) The federal bill states only that the feature should be "made available." The Minnesota bill says smartphones should be “equipped” with the feature. (A spokesman for Gascón said the San Francisco D.A. The California bill specifies that the kill switch should be enabled by default on phones, but adds that users can opt out of it. There are some differences among the "soft" bills. The California bill, for example, requires that the kill switch "render inoperable" a device "to an unauthorized user," and that the feature survive a "hard reset" and be able to "prevent reactivation of the device on a wireless network except by the rightful owner or his or her authorized designee." In other words, the newer proposals wouldn't really kill the phone. The current California Senate bill, SB 962, the Minnesota bill, HF 1952, and the federal bill, the Smartphone Theft Prevention Act, ask for less severe, reversible, "soft" kill switches. "Such a feature would disable the device even if it is turned off or the SIM card has been removed." "The implementation of a 'kill switch' would render stolen devices inoperable on any network, anywhere in the world," read the mission statement. When Gascón and Schneiderman launched an initiative called Secure Our Smartphones in June 2013, they demanded that smartphone makers build in a "hard" kill switch, a feature that would render a stolen device permanently and completely useless - to give it "the value of a paperweight," according to the Secure Our Smartphones mission statement. There are really two different kinds of proposed kill switches for smartphones - a "hard" kill switch that permanently "bricks" a phone, and a "soft" alternative that makes a phone unusable to all but the legitimate owner. What kind of kill switch do politicians want on smartphones? But even their definition is different from what most politicians are asking for a year later. A simple power-off switch is a bit different from what the two public figures leading the smartphone-kill-switch crusade, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, originally demanded in 2013.
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