Earlier this year we mentioned how the California Senate had passed the bill that would make it a requirement for smartphone OEMs to include kill switches in their devices. Well it looks like the law will finally come into effect by 2015, thanks to California Governor Jerry Brown who signed the bill into law.
For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of kill switches, it’s basically a feature where users can remotely disable their device when it is stolen or lost, thus rendering it unusable. Given that smartphones are stolen all the time and resold in the black market or reused by the thief, rendering it useless would make it less desirable for thieves to attempt anything.
While we suppose there could eventually be a way for hackers to find a way around the kill switch, at the very least it would deter common criminals who are planning to make a quick buck. That being said even if the bill had not been passed and had not been made into a law, companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, and so on have recently volunteered to install kill switches into their devices.
Either way we suppose that now that it has been made a law, customers can rest easy knowing that their phones will now come bundled with an additional security measure that will hopefully drastically drive down the amount of smartphone theft that is taking place.