By Lauren Dugan on June 22, 2010 10:53 AM

5 Ways To Protect Your Stuff With Your Mobile Phone

theft There are plenty of lock-down and alarm type apps for mobile phones that work to prevent handset and data theft. But smartphones can also be used to protect your other stuff – bikes, cars, and even livestock. Here is a list of three ways phones can be used to protect your stuff, and two ways we think could hit the market in the near future.

Protect your Bike with a Mobile Phone

Bike Revolution offers mobile-owning cyclists a way to protect their bikes through an innovative tagging and reporting system, all done on the mobile phone. Users can add a tamper-proof scan bar to their bike, and anyone purchasing a bike can scan these codes with a smartphone to see if the bike was reported stolen. If the bike was reported as stolen, the recently scanned information will be uploaded to Twitter and Facebook so that volunteers can get the information to law enforcement, pawn shops, bike shops and others.

Protect your Car with a Mobile Phone

Toyota has been installing its Toyota and Lexus brand cars with innovative G-BOOK technology for years. While this offers many neat features (like a touch screen dashboard, a network accessible from the car, phone, PC, laptop or PDA and an open source development platform), it’s the security feature that really stands out. G-BOOK connects to the Toyota owner’s cellphone and notifies her about her car alarm going off via SMS. If it is a real break-in attempt, she will again be notified that her engine has started and she will be kept up to date on the car’s location via the built-in GPS. With one SMS reply, she can send a signal to the -BOOK to shut down the engine and lock the car – much, we’re sure, to the dismay of any would-be thieves.

Protect your Livestock with a Mobile Phone

Mobile phones don’t have to be super high tech for them to be useful for theft prevention. Kenya’s pastoral communities have been using phones to prevent cattle theft across a large geographical range. Using simple cell phones – in areas often without even basic landlines – means that a community can notify members of another community if thieves are spotted. This type of mobile communication across distances might not be new, but it is certainly a deterrent against theft, especially in remote and disconnected areas.

In the Future, Protect your Home with a Mobile Phone

It’s not too hard to imagine a home security system that sends a direct SMS to your phone if your home is being broken into. Combine this with the possibility for security cameras to capture an image of the intruder and instantly email it to your phone, and you’ve got a nearly-instant way to identify a break-in and the intruder in one go. Imagine being able to rush to the police station fully equipped with an image of the thief and the exact time your house was broken into. And if you’re out of town, you could even email this information to your local police station to aid in the investigation.

In the Future, Protect your Family with a Mobile Phone

If mobile technology can protect inanimate objects, it’s natural to think of how it can be used to protect those nearest and dearest to us. What if your child had a “panic button” of sorts that would alert you via SMS if he or she was in danger? Or even a collar on your retriever that would send a text if he broke free from his leash and wandered off the yard? These uses of mobile technology to protect against theft and loss would need some serious fine-tuning to ensure that they don’t cause more panic than they prevent, but the possibility is there.