Tech Companies to New York for Smartphone Theft Summit - East Idaho News
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Tech Companies to New York for Smartphone Theft Summit

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GETTY 5113 iPhone1?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1370458164717Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Smartphone theft has become so common police have a name for it:  Apple Picking. Now prosecutors in New York and in San Francisco want smartphone manufacturers to sour the fruit.  

They’ve summoned Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung to a conference next week where they will press for a so-called “kill switch,” to render a stolen smartphone permanently inoperable.  

Eliminating the phone’s ability to be reactivated, prosecutors say, would make it useless to criminals who wipe clean stolen phones and resell them on the black market.

Last year, 1.6 million smartphones were stolen.

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