A Nigerian Technology development company, E.F. Network Ltd announced that it has developed a mobile application that will make a stolen mobile device unusable by thieves, which will help to deter theft or resale of mobile phones in the country. The announcement was disclosed by the company’s Public Relations Officer, Mr. Ameh Ochojila on Tuesday in Abuja. He disclosed that the application “ephonetaxi” will lock out anyone without proper authorization, thus making the mobile phone unusable and unsellable. Ochojila said,” Ephonetaxi helps to retrieve and send the user’s stored contents to his email.
It also alerts the phone owner of any change in SIM card, monitors, and tracks the phone location including taking pictures of criminals in possession of the phone and sending the picture to the email address of the owner.”
He added: “The owner can do all these remotely in spite of the phone being lost or stolen. Once the phone is locked remotely by the owner, buying it will be a mere waste of money.”
Statistics in 2016 stated that 400,000 phones were stolen in the UK, with a good number of them exported abroad for resale. The data also suggests that plenty of the stolen phones were first sold to criminal gangs, who tried to extract information that could be used to hack into the owner’s bank accounts, then subsequently selling the stolen phones to end-users.
The company also said the application could be used to trace kidnappers because it can reveal the real-time location of mobile phones.
The Chairman of the company, Mr. Gideon Egbuchulam said the application was one of several created by the company to meet up with the technical and software needs of Nigerians.
Egbuchulam said the company had also established an incubation centre in Abuja, in order to recruit young and brilliant Nigerian Information Technology (IT) professionals.
He said that with the proper enabling environment, Nigerian youths could make Nigeria the next Silicon Valley in Africa.
