The Home Office has just announced the winners of their Design Out Crime programme, a £400,000 Mobile Phone Security Challenge, to create ‘crime proof’ mobile phones.
The winning teams are; Proxama with Minima Design, Therefore Product Design with Imagination Technologies Limited, Rodd Design with TTP (The Technology Partnership) and Data Transfer Communications and PDD Group Limited with You Get It Back.
The purpose of the scheme is to help the UK reduce the impact of ID fraud as we get ready for MCommerce. The winning teams will aim to produce market-ready solutions which may include hardware and software for handsets, new services and other innovations, which will be showcased and promoted in early 2010, with a view to widespread and rapid take-up by the market.
According to the British Crime Survey, a mobile phone is stolen in half of all robberies. Another recent survey found that 80% of people carry information on their mobile phone handsets that could be used by criminals to commit fraud -and 16% keep their bank details saved on their phone, yet only 4 in 10 people currently lock their mobiles using a PIN. Such sensitive data includes website passwords, bookmarks, emails, personal security data and locations/addresses on map applications.