Google Activates Remote Kill Switch For The First Time

We all know that any smart phone maker — like Google, Apple, or Microsoft — builds in a back door exclusively for the down-the-line removal of any unforeseen problems. But we smart phone consumers still find it a little fishy (and depressing) when such a backdoor is put to use, such as the case with Google in its Android recently.

Google unleashed its weapons this week upon a couple of apps that can prove disastrous to your device. Google announced that it removed two useless but still Terms of Service-infringing apps. Google does admit, however, that most of the users who downloaded these programs had deleted them already, and that this removal was more of a test of the remote application removal feature than was it a cleanup operation. Google has said that it will let the users know if the application is removed by sending a notification to the phone.