Bad News For South African Looters As Samsung Moves To Block Their Stolen TVs

Last month there was widespread looting and chaos in South Africa as alleged supporters of former president Jacob Zuma protested against his incarceration over contempt of court charges. The protests disintegrated into chaos as people started looting shops and blowing up ATMs. Among the popular items stolen were smart TVs.

Samsung South Africa has now announced that they would be remotely blocking all TVs looted from shops during this period. They will do this using a security feature known as Television Block Function which is found in all modern Samsung Television sets. The block will be activated on all Television sets looted from their warehouses in Durban last month.

TV block is Samsung’s remote security feature which detects Samsung TVs that have been activated illegally and not by their rightful owners. The feature allows Samsung to remotely disable all functions on the affected Television set rendering it useless. Essentially it turns your stolen smart TV into nothing more than a heap of plastic with a screen.

A major weakness of the feature is that it only comes into effect when the culprit device connects to the internet.– READ MORE