Thanks to improved GPS technology, the days of losing your mobile phone without a trace are likely numbered.
Apple and Kaspersky are just two of the bigger vendors to offer a mobile tracking service that is intended to catch mobile thieves red handed in the act and some mobile owners are fighting back.
Some are calling the small revenge movement 'geek justice', but it could be better surmised as mobile vigilantism, the process by which mobile phone owners are able bypass the cops and go straight to the source of the crime itself.
Results of the attacks are typically published across various internet forums and then picked up by news aggregators for comment and conjecture - much to the embarrassment of the thieves themselves and even the authorities, whom are usually too slow or ill equipped to react to minor thefts in many respects.
In one scenario, a Chicago man used Apple's Mobile Me service to help track down a thief using just a wireless broadband card and an equally giant dose of courage. In another, a Mac thief that stole over $5500 of laptops was caught by the Macbook's webcam, so the idea of tracking isn't new to users in other forms either.
The 'Find My Phone' service connects a GPS locator to Google maps and gives the phone owner a real-time location as the thief goes on the run.
Not surprisingly, Google is a central player in this dicey game of electronic cat and mouse. Its public and extensive mapping service allows phone owners to quickly zone in on a thief's location, a point not lost on previous (and failed) versions of mobile GPS trackers that used expensive private mapping services and featured only limited topography data.
As a result, Google's rise to map king is a boon to would be mobile vigilantes. But for non Apple phone users, there is one product that aims to catch all.
Kaspersky Lab, known for their excellent malware and anti-virus protection products, offers an all-in-one thief detective kit, as part of their latest mobile security package (Kaspersky Mobile security 8.0) - albeit with a couple of clever twists.
Kaspersky users are not only able to track thieves by GPS in a similar fashion to Apple's competing product, but remotely block access to the SIM card as well.
And if the thief tries to recycle the phone and use a new SIM in its place, the Kaspersky product deals with that too.
A feature known as 'SIM watch' initially waits for bumbling thieves to change SIM cards and assume their regular lives again. The phone then alerts the original handset owner of the new stolen number, effectively giving the phone owner the upper hand.
Kaspersky also offers a remote SIM cleaning service that can erase the phones memory remotely, in case you've left sensitive emails on your phone. This could be useful to business users, keen to prevent their data getting into the wrong hands.
Other competing services such as W.I.M.P and Gadgettrak offer similar GPS tracking services via SMS too, and have been around a little longer in the market, although aren't as well known as the Kaspersky brand.
The Kaspersky phone software retails for $41.95 online (valid for 12 months). The competing Apple Mobile Me service is more than $119 US and that doesn't include some of the more intricate Kaspersky security settings.