Guatemala Works Out A Strategy To Curb Cell Phone Theft

Thefts of any nature can be very traumatizing for the victim; be it money, devices or personal information, theft can be very frightening. In today’s time when there are thousands of valuable consumer products and device that people use in everyday life, theft is very frequent and easy to carry out. The worst kind of theft is of personal information and it happens through cell phones which carry enormous amounts of sensitive user data which should not be made public. For this reason, cell phone tracking has come to the fore where stolen phones can be retrieved through a tracking mechanism and user data could be restored and saved. Cell phone monitoring software comes save the day in some cases.

A National Database Is In Order

Because of the ever rising trend in cell phone theft, Guatemala has decided to create a national database to stop the increasing number of cell phone robberies. According to recent statistics, around 10,000 cell phones are robbed every month in the country, and due to these staggering figures, Guatemala has taken significant steps to curb cell phone theft once and for all. Cell phone robberies are a major source for underground funding and street culture in the country. Street crimes involving cell phone theft has become an impending cause of concern for Guatemala because of which innocent citizens have become very apprehensive about the situation in their country. In order to curb this form of theft, cell phone monitoring software the likes of iPhone spy apps etc. are important as they track cell phones down easily and helps catch the thief as well.

Due to difficulties in making a database for more that 15 million cell phones, this proposal had taken a back seat last year. However, due to the increasing numbers of cell phone theft, Legislator Ninth Montenegro has bought the bill forwards in the Guatemalan congress once again. The bill presents harsher penalties for cell phone robbery which includes prison time for up to 8 years along with a fine of $30,000. The congress has taken the “strict punishment, less crime” approach and hopefully it will work out for the country.

A conference which recently took place amongst government authorities and phone company representatives formulated a proposal o f making two lists of cell phones which the police can have access to: One would be a list of all the cell phones that people own in the country and the other would be of those phones that are reported to have been stolen. Forming this list would be the job of the Superintendence of Telecommunications who would also make sure that this list keeps getting updated.

Formulating Lists

For the purpose of keeping a list of cell phones, people would be asked, while buying a new phone, to give their personal information and a fingerprint so it would be locked with that particular mobile device. With this data available, it would be easy for the law enforcement authorities to catch cell phone thieves and prosecute them. This would consequently bring a prominent decrease in cell phone theft in Guatemala.

Too Bad For the Cell Phone Companies

The flipside is the concerns raised by cell phone companies who fear that this bill would mean they would have to hire more employees to keep the records of all their cell phones. Moreover, they claim that it would be very difficult to keep these records as they would also have to take into account the rural areas of the country.

That put aside, cell phone theft and robberies in Guatemala does require that this bill come into place as it gives some assurance to the citizens of decreased cell phone theft and of a better street situation in the country.

Natalia David, a blogger by profession an author significantly contributes towards PC security, Cell phone monitoring software (download software from cellspyexpert) and iphone spy software. If you want to know more about Natalia you can follow her on twitter @NataliaDavid4.