With 41 percent of Filipinos having experienced their phones being lost or stolen, Galileo Software Services Inc. has seen it fit to develop the Theft Alarm and Recovery Application (TARA). The platform ensures that your personal information—including contacts, photos videos, e-mails, social accounts, and credentials—will stay free from prying eyes.
“When a person is a victim of mobile phone theft, it leaves him or her feeling helpless. It can be a traumatic experience where the victim often feels as if he has been violated. There are also deaths that have been attributed to robbery attempts. Hold-up and snatching incidents have been commonplace scenarios in our streets,” explained Jun Lozada, president and CEO of Galileo.
“We need to feel safe whenever we go out. This is why we developed TARA. It is like a seatbelt for your mobile phone. As our tagline says, ‘No mobile phone or device should be worth a life, not even a scratch,’” Lozada added.
TARA is a remote phone kill switch that works without Wi-Fi, data connection, or even prepaid load. Instead, it is telco-enabled where account credentials are sent to a dedicated SMS number free of charge.
As of writing TARA has several features, namely: Lock which renders the phone unusable, blares the phrase “Magnanakaw! Magnanakaw!” to call attention to the thief, and detects if the SIM has been changed or tampered with; Unlock which gets the device working again; Locate which gives users the exact and current location of the phone; Wipe which erases the data and contents of the phone; and Backup and Restore which allows users to copy the contacts, photos, videos, and other files, and then transfer them to another phone later on.
An upcoming feature that will be added to TARA is the Red Button. It allows users to send out an SOS message, complete with their exact location and time engaged, to a predetermined contact number. All the user would have to do is to hold down a widget for up to four seconds for the emergency message to be sent. It is coded to work even when the phone is locked.
Currently available for Android users, the TARA app is free for download on the Google Play Store. After registering their basic information, users will receive a free 30-day access to gauge if the product is fit for them. Should they wish to continue their subscription, weekly, monthly, and yearly protection plans can be arranged for PHP 15, PHP 50, and PHP 500, respectively.
Once registered, users need only send the keywords “LOCK,” “UNLOCK,” “LOCATE,” and “WIPE,” their number, and their PIN to 5161. While it is initially only available to users on the Smart, Sun, and Talk N’ Text network using an Android phone, the Galileo team is looking to have it up and running across all telcos and all devices in the soonest possible time.
“With the launch of the TARA app, we can offer a solution to the alarming cell phone theft situation in the country. TARA is the first of its kind level of security that enables the user to lock his phone entirely rendering it useless to a thief. It also provides the service of tracking its current location as well as wiping out and recovering its contents,” Lozada says. “We Filipinos may feel helpless about other things such as the worsening traffic or the country’s economic and political situation, but with the sense of security that even ordinary citizens can get from this app, they will not feel as helpless about the protection of something that is very personal for them.”
To learn more about TARA, visit www.tara.com.ph, or call their contact center at 656-8272, 0998-965-7419, 0943-131-0544.