Kill pill technology is most commonly used to disable lost or stolen devices for security purposes, but can also be used for the enforcement of rules and contractual obligations.
If the driver is found to be over the legal blood alcohol content limit, the vehicle will not start[8] Kill pill technology can also be implemented to contextually disable certain aspects of a smartphone's functionality.
A patent obtained by Apple claims the ability to disable the antenna, screen, or camera of a smartphone in settings like theaters, schools, and areas of high security sensitivity.
While a kill pill can be utilized in a school setting to prevent academic dishonesty, it has been suggested that governments may also use it to suppress their people, for example, by disabling a phone's camera or antenna in the area of a protest.
Apple's apparent ability to blacklist applications, rendering them unusable on any iDevice, has raised concerns about the user's rights when downloading from the App Store.