Patent ID: 8429759

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving an out-of-band (OOB) notification indicative of theft of a computing device; transmitting a theft message representative of the theft to the computing device via a wireless wide area network, wherein at least one component of the computing device is disabled in response to receipt of the theft message, wherein the theft message is detected based on filtering of an incoming Short Message Service (SMS) message, wherein an application header of the SMS message is examined for a vendor identifier in response to receipt of the incoming SMS message and the incoming SMS message is determined to be the theft message if the vendor identifier matches a pre-configured vendor identifier, wherein receiving the notification or transmitting the theft message is performed at a theft management server, a service organization, or combinations thereof from or to the computing device via a 3G network, wherein the computing device comprises a manageability engine to transmit a message indicative of the disabled state of the computing device to the theft management server, and wherein the theft management server and the computing device send and receive messages without dependency on a user or host operating system of the computing device.