We continue to fight the war against phone theft with kill switches, but companies like Sony have been providing theft protection for years. Sony’s My Xperia app can locate, lock, factory reset or even send a sound alert to your phone. That’s not all it does, though – if you have an unlocked bootloader, it may go as far as making your device malfunction.

Those with the My Xperia Theft Protection service on their more recent high-end Sony Xperia smartphones may have noticed that using this service will get rid of the ability to unlock your bootloader. This makes sense, as tinkering with your smartphone can remove certain DRM security keys that are necessary for certain functions to operate. For example, this action can affect camera quality and other features.

The bad news is not exactly that one can’t unlock the bootloader after this app has been in use. It’s what happens if you activate My Xperia Theft Protection after the bootloader has been unlocked that has us worrying. Here’s Sony’s disclaimer:

“After unlocking your device, you should not enable My Xperia (found in the settings menu under security on some devices running Android 5.0) as this might cause the device to malfunction.”

Not a fun scenario, so please make sure you don’t go near this app if you ever want to unlock your bootloader, or if you already have. It’s uncertain what kind of “malfunctioning” Sony is referring to in this statement. It could be something minor… or it could brick your smartphone, turning it into the fanciest paperweight you have ever owned.

Have any of you encountered any issues with the My Xperia Theft Protection service on devices with unlocked bootloaders? Please sound off in the comments and share your experiences. We sure wouldn’t want unfortunate events happening to more people.