Dead ringer photo to beat phone thieves

Built-in cameras have turned many mobile-phone owners into handy photographers, but soon they could be turning the camera on themselves.

With Britain now home to more mobiles than people, phone theft is an increasing problem - more than 1.3m phones were stolen in 2003. One Japanese software company is offering a face recognition system aimed at deterring robbers.

Omron Corporation's system lets phone owners snap a self-portrait and save the image on the handset. Whenever the phone is activated, users take a fresh picture of themselves. By comparing the two images, the phone can determine whether it has been stolen or is being misused.

"Mobile devices are carrying increasingly personal information, including address books, schedules and payment information," said Masato Kawade, senior manager of Omron's sensing technology laboratory in Kyoto. "This technology has been designed to protect this information even when the phone is lost or stolen."

The verification process takes less than a second and works by analysing the distances between key points on the face. The makers have reported a 99% success rate, though some experts say highly accurate systems are too complex for a mobile phone to handle.

"It depends on the conditions that the picture can be taken in - usually you've got to hold it very straight," said Keith Kendrick, a professor of neuroscience at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge. "Building the necessary algorithms to recognise faces at an angle or in profile can be pretty heavy going. But I see nothing wrong with this as an approach - the only problem would be if you'd just seen your plastic surgeon that morning."

Figures from the Metropolitan police show that half of all street robberies include the theft of a mobile.