iPhone6_PF_SpGry_5-Up_iOS8-PRINT-2Smartphone owners can rest a little bit easier when it comes to having their phones stolen, according to new data released today.

In a joint press release, London Mayor Boris Johnson, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said that cell phone thefts in their cities have fallen in the period from January 2013 to December of 2014. San Francisco saw the most change, with iPhone robberies dropping by 40 percent over the period, and robberies of all cell phones going down by 27 percent. The New York Police Department recorded a 25 percent drop in iPhone robberies and a 16 percent overall drop in cell phone robberies in the same period,

London has seen a similar decline in smartphone crime, with smartphone thefts from people dropping 40 percent.

The news comes after Apple and Google have rolled out “kill switches” in the latest versions of their mobile operating systems that will prevent someone from erasing and re-activating a phone without the original user’s permission. Apple was the first to roll out its “Activation Lock” feature in 2013, while Google followed suit with a feature of its own in the Lollipop update of Android that was released in October.

Microsoft is slated to incorporate its own kill switch functionality into phones running Windows later this year.

Last year, California passed a law requiring that all smartphones sold in the state after July 1 of this year have some sort of kill switch that would prevent thieves from re-using it.

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