Digital Journal — If you’re worried about someone making calls on your cellphone, look to Japan for the next wave of paranoid security ideas: a new phone from carrier NTT DoCoMo automtically locks when the owner is far away from it.
The P9030i comes with a small black card that works as a security key by connecting wirelessly with the cellphone. Keeping the card in a bag or pocket, the owner can access the phone no problem. When the card is far away from the phone — at either 26, 66 or 130 feet away — the phone locks automatically to prevent someone else fro making a call.
The card also doubles as a credit card or a prepaid cash card, a trend that is gaining popularity among other recent Japenese phones.
But what if a criminal steals both the security card and the phone? The P9030i has a quick answer: Facial recognition software. Owners can take several pics of themselves with the phone’s camera, shot in various situations and poses. Then, if the facial-recognition feature is switched on, the user has to take a pic of himself with the camera before accessing the handset. The software compares the photo with the stored data, analyzing features such as distance between eyes. If there’s a match, the phone unlocks.
Another layer of security includes a four-letter password to further pacify the anxiety-prone wary cellphone users.
“Security is increasingly a key function for mobile phones as they become loaded with more sophisticated features,” NTT DoCoMo spokeswoman Mamiko Tanaka told Associated Press. “Handset makers are all competing to come up with interesting ways to strengthen security.”
North American telecom carriers can learn from this role model of cellphone privacy, but there’s also an important caveat: Too much security can weaken the cellphone experience, since a user losing the accompanying card would have to endure more than one hurdle to gain access to the phone. Plus, what does it say about our society when companies start to layer their products with enough security features to scare the CIA? Most likely, the P9030i’s features won’t be replicated in the West anytime soon, yet the lesson is worth learning: The technological hub of your life, the simple cellphone, will not remain a simple product.
In fact, as Japan is showing us, in the future cellphones are not going to be easy prey for street pickpockets. Whether that overall helps the average user or not has yet to be determined.
