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The Home Office has been teaming up with the UK Design Council to come up with models that could help reduce the number of phones being nicked in the country.

Three prototypes were developed and funded by the Technology Strategy Board as part of the Mobile Phone Security Challenge.  They will be shown to the many industry players that will be participating as from next week to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The models of potential future products - many manufacturers have yet to see them, let alone adopt them as commercial products - include one, the i-migo, which allows triggers and alert and locks the mobile when it moves out of range.

Another one called the "tie" matches your handset with the SIM card thereby preventing mobile phone identity fraud by preventing unwanted access to sensitive information stored on the card by using encryption.

As for the TouchSafe, it  is a card that activates mobile phone payments using Near Field Communications, something that has been implemented in Oyster and other Touch and Go solutions.

According to the Home office, mobile phone identity fraud has been rising by more than 70% in 2009 alone as the number of phones capable of performing computer-like functions increased dramatically.

Source:-   ITProPortal (http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2010/2/11/home-office-unveils-anti-theft-prototypes-mobile-phones/showall/).

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Furthermore, the percentage of young adults having suffered from a phone theft last year stood at six percent although across all age groups, that percentage falls to two percent, that translates into around one mobile phone lost every 14 seconds.