We all know that feeling when you reach into your pocket or handbag and shock horror, your phone is gone. You then spend the next twenty minutes on the phone to your service provider, trying to supply a million-digit long IMEI number so that they can blacklist your phone. Only for the phone to be turned back on a day later and sold on to some sod who loves stolen phones. I’m not even going to start explaining the terror that envelopes me at the thought of having to get a case number from the local police station.

Anyway, I digress.

In a new legislation signed by California Governor Jerry Brown, every  smartphone sold after 1 July 2015 in California will have to have a ‘kill switch’, which, when activated, will render the phone useless.

“Companies such as Apple, Google and Samsung, agreed earlier this year to voluntarily add kill-switch capability on phones after July 1 of next year. “

There are not yet precise specifications of how the kill switch must work, but it must enable the user to remotely “brick” their phone and erase data. Also, in the case of the phone being simply misplaced, the user should be able to turn the phone back on.

Read the full article at Time.