Secure Your Mobile Phone With Bluetooth and Related Technologies

The mobile phone is about to become much morephone enabling to make a monetary transaction.
secure as the result of new Bluetooth and relatedTouch Safe does not use Bluetooth but instead
technologies. A number of new innovations haveuses Near Field Communication technology. This is
been made to both beat mobile phone thievesa short range wireless technology which has a
and to make monetary transactions using arange of just a few centimetres. It uses magnetic
mobile phone a much more secure process.induction in the 13.56 MHz radio frequency band as
These new innovations are designed to warn theis used in the Oyster travel card system.
phone owner when the phone is more than a fewThe advantage of NFC over Bluetooth is that it is
meters away, to make the phone inoperable if iteasier to set up and has a much shorter range
is stolen, to enable the phone to be used securelywhich makes it more secure for this kind of
as a credit card, and to lock the pone to aapplication. Furthermore, it uses far less power
specific SMS card. These innovations are thethan current Bluetooth devices however, with the
i-migo, the Security Lock, the Touch Safe and theimminent introduction of Bluetooth Low Energy
Tie.i-migothis advantage may soon be lost.
The i-migo is essentially a Bluetooth alarm which isThe Tie
carried by the user on his or her person. It isThe Tie is a mobile phone application that pairs a
paired to the Bluetooth phone and if the phonehandset with a specific SIM card. Essentially it is an
and i-migo are separated by moe than the rangeadvanced encryption system that has two
of the device, nominally 10 metres, then thefunctions. Should the phone by stolen, then it will
i-migo sounds an alarm alerting the user.not work with an alternative SIM card and the
Security Lockphone applications and functions cannot be
The Security Lock can work in unison with theaccessed without a user controlled PIN. It is likely
i-migo or in fact with any Bluetooth device suchthat this will be combined with the above wireless
as a Bluetooth Headset. Security Lock is anand Bluetooth technologies in order to provide a
application that is installed in a mobile phone. Thebelt and braces approach to mobile phone
phone is then paired with the mobile Bluetoothsecurity.
device. If the phone and Bluetooth device ever goFinal Word
out of range, then the phone will lock down andOver recent years mobile phones have
remain locked down until the device and phoneprogressively become more like computers than
again come within range. The phone is completelyphones and as a result many more aspects of
locked so that no access can be gained to anyour life have become dependent on them. They
data stored on it and all the phone's functions areare likely to contain significant personal information
inaccessible.on us that potentially would be of great benefit to
TouchSafecriminals and that we might not want to be
TouchSafe is a security system designed foraccessible to others. The innovations described in
future mobile phone applications that are in thethis article will serve to increase our security and
pipeline; an example is the plan to allow the mobileprotect our valuable data, though as always
phone to be used for monetary transactions, inhappens with these type of innovations, criminals
effect turning the mobile phone into a credit card.become cleverer and find new ways to
The TouchSafe is a security card than is used toovercome them thus creating a never ending
authorise the phone to act as a credit card. Thegame of cat and mouse. It is important that we
card is carried by the person just as is a creditkeep one step ahead and ensure that we make
card.the best use of the modern secure technologies
When the card and phone are brought intoas they are developed.
contact, an authorisation signal is passed to the