A NOVEL LOCATION-BASED ANTI-THEFT IMAGE CAPTURE APPLICATION WITH CULPRIT IDENTIFICATION FOR SMARTPHONES

Abstract

An Android smartphone application, “A Novel Location-based Anti-theft Image Capture with Culprit Identification for Smartphones”, has been proposed in this work. This application helps the user track the current location of the mobile that has been lost/stolen and identify the person(s) who stole the smartphone. Location tracking techniques have been applied for tracking the stolen mobile phone. Using handset-based location techniques, the handset detects the signal transmitted from multiple base stations and/or satellites and uses these signals to determine the location of the phone. Once the proposed mobile application service is activated, the stolen phone automatically sends a text message of its current address (location) to registered contacts through short messaging service (SMS) even when the stolen mobile has been switched off. In addition, if someone tries to change the subscriber identification module (SIM) card of the stolen phone, then the proposed mobile application will automatically capture the image of that person. Every time the phone is rebooted, the application will check the status of the current SIM card. When there is a change of the SIM card, the proposed service is automatically activated and tracks the phone’s location along with capturing snapshots of the person changing the SIM card and sends the information to registered contacts. The key significance of this work is capturing the snapshots of the person and sending the information to email ids of registered contacts in every reboot along with the location as a text message to registered contacts. This mobile application is highly helpful for users to recover their stolen mobile phones, particularly to those who cannot afford to lose their expensive smartphones with confidential data.