`Kill switch` to be embedded in smartphones from next year

#Scene 1. At the end of last year, 12 smartphones went missing altogether at an elementary school in Mapo district of Seoul. It turned out that five runaway teenagers sneaked into the school and stole the smartphones while students were out of the classroom for a PE class. The runaway teens sold them at 70,000 won (62.72 U.S. dollars) to 100,000 won (89.61 dollars) per phone and they were initialized and sold as second-hand devices.

#Scene 2. A 60-year-old man living in Gyeonggi Province had a bad luck while he went to a senior citizens center in his neighborhood last year. He met young volunteers and passed his ID to them. They asked him his ID saying, “We’d like to give you daily commodities such as instant noodles and eggs, and we need your ID for confirmation.” They turned out to be conmen who opened a mobile phone service using senior citizens’ IDs and sold mobile phones at hundreds of thousands of won (hundreds of dollars) per device. Some victimized senior citizens were charged with phone bills of up to 2.4 million won (2,150 dollars) per month.

The government released measures to prevent illegal use of mobile phones to prevent crimes related to high-priced smartphones. The measures announced by the Science, ICT, and Future Planning Ministry on Tuesday include: a mandatory embedding of a “kill switch,” an anti-theft technology for smartphones; a security grading system for mobile phones that proactively prevent phone subscription by proxy or multiple subscription per person; and suspension of phone numbers that were used to illegal lending service advertisements.

A “kill switch” would enable victims to stop all functions in their smartphone through an Internet website if they lose their smartphone. If the thief tries to replace the USIM, the smartphone would not be turned on. The ministry said, “As (thieves) cannot use stolen smartphones, we can prevent smuggling to other countries and the leak of personal information.”

The ministry will consult with domestic mobile phone makers including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Pantech and have them embed a kill switch in all smartphones to be launched in the first half of next year.