Lost your phone, laptop? These software can find it for you

SINGAPORE - Student Tay Bo Yi, 20, was in Taiwan in May when he received an SMS from a friend's phone - except it was not his friend sending a message but an alert that a different SIM card had been inserted into the phone.

Next thing he knew, Mr Tay's phone rang and his friend was on the line telling him she had just lost her Nokia E71 handphone.

With the phone number from the new SIM card, Mr Tay's friend contacted the other party and threatened to make a police report. That did the trick and she got her phone back.

Thanks to anti-theft software programs, the experience of Mr Tay's friend is becoming more common.

Mr Tay told MediaCorp he had helped his friend install a program called Guardian, which sends an SMS to a predetermined phone number when a different SIM card is used.

On Monday, another application called Find My iPhone helped the police to arrest a serial snatch thief. It allowed the iPhone to be located on a map.

According to a police spokesman, there were 3,671 handphone-related crimes last year, ranging from theft to fraud. In the first half of this year, there were 1,823 cases.

Mr Paddy Tan, head of software firm BAK2u, which sells anti-theft software programs, said his company has seen 30 million downloads worldwide since it started operations in 2005. Apart from handphones, anti-theft programs are also available for laptops, said Mr Tan.

One example is the Phoenix program: When the laptop is connected to the Internet, an authentication dialogue will request the user to enter a password. If the user fails to enter the correct password within a certain time, hidden email and Twitter alerts of the laptop's location will be sent to the owner.

Mr Tan said: "Singapore has one of the highest number of adopters of gadgets ... It's important to protect not just the devices but also the data in it."

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