How would you stop a mobile phone from being stolen?

This is indeed totally off topic,

I am devloping software to render mobile phones useless after it has been stolen.

But the best ideas always come from the people who use them or have had one stolen before.

The question is simple, how would you make a mobile worthless to a theif?

Maybe you could be required to enter a password before every charge. If you can't charge the phone then it's useless

Making the phone only work with a certain sim card.

For exmaple when people still phones they take out the sim card straight away as people report it stolen.

Once the theif has put his sim card in, the phone would lock and become worthless.

Hope this helped

MrSafe wrote:Making the phone only work with a certain sim card.

For exmaple when people still phones they take out the sim card straight away as people report it stolen.

Once the theif has put his sim card in, the phone would lock and become worthless.

Hope this helped

But what about if one of your mates batteries is dead and they need to put their sim in your phone to ring someone.

HOW ABOUT THAT THEN LOL BOY?

You could get massive, no-ones ever tried stealing my phone.

Dorristhejack wrote:

MrSafe wrote:Making the phone only work with a certain sim card.

For exmaple when people still phones they take out the sim card straight away as people report it stolen.

Once the theif has put his sim card in, the phone would lock and become worthless.

Hope this helped

But what about if one of your mates batteries is dead and they need to put their sim in your phone to ring someone.

HOW ABOUT THAT THEN LOL BOY?

Do you really want me to LOL you to death ?

Dont want to sound annoying or daft or anything, but isn't this already possible with the IMEI number?

wikipedia:

When mobile equipment is stolen or lost, the operator or owner will typically contact the Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR), which blacklists the device in all operator switches so that it will, in effect, become unusable, making theft of mobile equipment a useless business.

The IMEI number is not supposed to be easy to change, making the CEIR blacklisting effective. However, this is not always the case: a phone's IMEI may be easy to change with special tools and some operators may even flatly ignore the CEIR blacklist.

BTW to get your IMEI number, its usually under the cover of your phone, or just dial *#06#

Simple, cover it with Cardiff City badges - who the feck would want to associate themselves with a bunch of born losers? Course no-one would want to buy it from the thief either making it pointless to nick it in the first place.