Samsung offers 'theft proof' tablets

Cape Town - Electronics giant Samsung is targeting mobile crime head-on with a new service aimed at schools which buy its tablets.

The electronics giant announced that it plans to offer schools theft prevention for its Galaxy Tab tablets.

"The solution being offered by Samsung and Absolute Software provides both security and peace of mind for our customers. They can rest assured that any device with Absolute Computrace offers high-quality track and trace measures," said Paulo Ferreira, director of Enterprise Mobility at Samsung Electronics SA.

The Computrace software is able to run in the background and even survive a factory reset if the device is stolen, said Samsung.

Anecdotal studies suggest that the adoption of kill switches has led to a significant drop in smartphone theft in London, New York and San Francisco.

Risk of loss

In those cities, incidents of smartphone theft plummeted by between 25% and 40% a year, or a reduction of around 20 000 victims annually since the introduction of the feature on iPhones and Android-powered devices.

According to the national crime statistics prepared by the SA Police Service for 2013/2014, reported public or street robbery cases went up from 60 476 to 69 240 in the period under review.

But that increase is well below the 100 436 cases reported in 2004/2005.

Common robbery cases were relatively flat at 53 858 and robbery with aggravating circumstances was slightly up at 119 351 reported cases.

As government moves toward digital education, the risk of loss of devices could impact on the efficacy of digital education programmes.

South Africa's government earlier this year allocated R640bn toward basic education. Part of that sum will no doubt be spent on digital education as the Gauteng province rolls out its R17bn digital education programme.

Most tracking apps can be defeated with a factory reset which wipes all information from the device and re-installs a fresh copy of the operating system.

However, while securing the device is probable, there is still a risk of physical injury to people as a result of the theft of mobile devices.

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