While we reported last week that the California Senate did pass the amended ‘Kill Switch’ bill, it must be noted that the Minnesota state government has also passed such a bill into law, where “kill switches” need to be on mobile devices. The whole idea for a ‘kill switch’ would be to have pre-installed software on the device giving you the opportunity to disable said device remotely, coming in handy when you have lost your handset, although there is also every possibility that it might be abused in the wrong hands.
The governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, signed the bill into law yesterday, where this law will require all mobile connected devices to sport anti-theft software installed by July 1st, 2015. Not only that, this is also the first state that has passed such a serious requirement over here in the US.
The situation is also made easier with a slew of companies that are involved in smartphones such as Apple, Google and Microsoft, in addition to other major wireless carriers in the U.S, have pledged to install remote free remote wiping software on all of their devices on a voluntary basis, kicking off this pledge with new units sold after July 2015.
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