LONDON-
Now if your mobile telephone is stolen, you can scream–and your phone can, too. A new service launched Monday is designed to deter mobile phone theft by equipping telephones with an ear-piercing scream.
The screaming won’t stop unless the battery is removed. Even if the thief replaces the phone’s SIM card, the handset will not work.
All customers’ information is centrally stored, so contacts, ringtones, pictures, texts and other data can be retrieved when a new handset is purchased. The service costs about $18 a month.
The goal of the service is to make mobile phones useless to anyone but the rightful owner, said Mark Whiteman, the managing director of Remote XT.
“We’ll see the market for stolen handsets stamped out once and for all,” he said.
——
On The Net:
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
