Most people consider their smartphones the most important thing in their lives.  It holds all their contacts, memories in photos and videos, and even other personal accounts such as bank or credit card details.  So when someone loses their smartphone, they aren’t only losing a device, they’re losing a huge chunk of their life.

In the US, about 113 smartphones get lost or stolen per minute.  The Federal Communications Commission claims that cellphone theft accounts for 30-40 percent of robberies in the US.  In New York, phone theft increased by 40 percent in just a year.

These number are alarming, especially as our gadgets get upgraded year after year, in features and price.   We can only expect that smartphone theft will also increase.  Can anyone save us?  Two district attorneys on opposite ends of the country have stepped up to the plate, pushing for better technology to protect you and me from the rampant wiles of smartphone thievery.

Secure Our Smartphones Initiative

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Prosecutors, political officials, law enforcement and consumer advocates from over a dozen states, are teaming up under a new group aimed to tackle the pressing issue of smartphone theft.  The Secure Our Smartphone Initiative will be led by the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, and the San Francisco district attorney, George Gascón.

Yesterday, Schneider and Gascón met up with representatives from Apple, Samsung, Google’s Motorola unit and Microsoft – five of the largest smartphone manufacturers and holds about 90 percent of the smartphone market.

“It is totally unacceptable that we have an epidemic of crime that we believe can be eliminated if the technological fixes that we believe are available are put into place,” Schneiderman said.

The co-chairmen are calling for the companies to create a technology that would render stolen devices useless, like a “kill switch.”

“The industry has the moral and the social obligation to fix this problem,” Mr. Gascón said. “There are very few things that can be fixed with a technological solution, and this is one of them.”

Apple recently unveiled the iOS 7 which it claims will have a feature called Activation Lock which will prevent stolen iPhones from being reactivated.  The iPhone can be wiped out and locked by the user so the thief won’t be able to use.  In order to reactivate the iPhone, the Apple ID used to erase and lock the phone is needed to be signed in.

Joining Kristin Feledy on NewsDesk is SiliconANGLE Contributing Editor John Casaretto with his Breaking Analysis on whether Apple’s Activation Lock would be a trendsetter for mobile security.

“I think that the market will follow what people want, what  features they want.  If it’s a hit, they focus [on] this.  If it becomes a focal point, this could be something we see other mobile giants start to step up and say, ‘Hey, we do this too,’” Casaretto stated.

He explained that about a year ago, the wireless carriers had gotten together for a nationwide database for phones that was supposed to blacklist phones that were reported as they were reported stolen or had gotten lost to prevent them from being reactivated on another network.  Casaretto explained that the measures implemented haven’t been effective as phone theft grew and the carriers have no idea as to how the phones are getting reactivated.  So this call for a new security measure can fall apart just as easily as the carrier’s security efforts.

As for consumers, Casaretto stated that having a kill switch could be negatively affected by the presence of it a this it could present a number of problems for them such as glitches caused by the kill switch.

For more of Casaretto’s Breaking Analysis, check out the NewsDesk video below, followed by a short list of ideas smartphone makers, carriers and the rest of the mobile tech giants can do to make smartphone theft a smaller worry for you and me.

What can tech giants do?

• Kill switch

A kill switch is a nice idea, since thieves won’t be able to use it.  Apple’s Activation Lock is kind of a kill switch but when the user gets the iPhone back, all the backed up data will be restored.  The problem with this is that I’m pretty sure hackers can find a way to make a program that could get the needed ID and password.  So a kill switch, like a self-destruct button, seems like the perfect solution.  It won’t necessarily have to explode, though that would be cool, Mission Impossible style, but a short-circuiting chip might do the trick.

• Security band

Fitness bands connected to your smartphone track your steps, heart rate and other physical stuff happening in your body.  Some people wear them day and night, tracking sleep patterns.  So why not make bands for security that double as fitness trackers?

It can be equipped with an alarm button that sets off an irritating sound on the phone, even when it gets turned off.  It’s great a great way for people to easily get their phone back, as thieves usually tend to leave things that could get them caught.  Or the band could have a kill switch button that automatically backs up everything on the cloud, wipes data and locks the phone so it will be useless for the thief.