An Easy Way To Curb Smart-Phone Thieves, In Australia

First time accepted submitter xx_chris writes "Cell carriers can and do brick jail broken cell phones but they won't brick stolen cell phones. Except in Australia. The Australians apparently have been doing this for 10 years and it reduces violent crime since the thieves know they won't be able to sell the stolen phone. The article points out that cell carriers have a financial disincentive to do this since a stolen phone means another sale."

Comments

Disincentive?

[grahamsaa]

It sounds like the carriers have an incentive to brick stolen phones, not a disincentive as the summary states. If a stolen phone results in another phone sale (to the person who's had their phone stolen) this doesn't sound like a disincentive to me.

Re:Disincentive?

[djmurdoch]

If a phone is stolen, they get another sale. If the phone is unusable after being stolen, it's less likely to be stolen, so there are fewer thefts and fewer sales.

Re:Disincentive?

[similar_name]

I think they are saying that bricking phones discourages theft which depresses theft related sales of new phones. I don't know how much revenue is generated replacing stolen phones so I don't know if it's a true statement.

Re:Disincentive?

[QuasiSteve]

It's a disincentive because the very same blurb you read also mentioned that it reduces violent crime since the thieves know they won't be able to sell the stolen phone. Less theft, thus.

Re:Disincentive?

[fryjs]

It's my understanding that they don't really brick the phones, all of the networks just block the phones by IMEI number based on a common database.

Re:Disincentive?

[zippthorne]

Interesting.. but wouldn't that expose them to liability for the theft?

I mean, we're suggesting that the cell companies are deliberately refusing to take action with the intent of exposing their customers to a greater risk of theft...

Re:disincentive?

[syockit]

Therefore it (the bricking of stolen phones) is a disincentive.

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm. No. If you think you are correct, please show me a single lawsuit against a carrier for not bricking the phone.

Re:Disincentive?

[similar_name]

Since Australia has been doing it for ten years perhaps a class action law suit is in order to demand a refund on all phones purchased as the result of theft in the last ten years.

Re:Disincentive?

[tomhudson]

... except that now the thieves have an incentive to buy the higher-operating-margin pre-paid phones when they need a "burn phone" to discuss illegal stuff.

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like you have trouble with reading and comprehension.

They have a disincentive to brick phones, because that could decrease sales.

They have an incentive to NOT brick phones, because that could increase sales.

Re:Disincentive?

[shentino]

Your challenge assumes that the liability you are questioning would be actionable even if it was there.

I'd say that corporate might would protect it from being sued regardless.

Re:Disincentive?

[Ksevio]

Or maybe the cell carriers have an incentive to steal phones in other countries. They already know about where the person is, and what kind of phone they have - plus they can sell the phone they steal to new customers!

Re:Disincentive?

[citizenr]

It's my understanding that they don't really brick the phones, all of the networks just block the phones by IMEI number based on a common database.

and changing imei is just one click away, at least for older models

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also- new contracts.

Re:Disincentive?

[wygit]

I think djmurdoch was replying on the wrong thread.
I was just reading a thread here on /. about copyright... it was... um... here somewhere... DAMN!

Re:Disincentive?

[black6host]

It's a disincentive because the very same blurb you read also mentioned that it reduces violent crime since the thieves know they won't be able to sell the stolen phone. Less theft, thus.

And that is a good thing. But in my world, whether it's broken (and then I have to pay a fee even though I have insurance on it) or stolen, I still have to pay something for a new phone. As an aside, how many thieves study their quarry to see what phone they have before robbing them. My guess is they'd rob them anyway and whatever they get that is good.... so much the better

Re:Disincentive?

[hawguy]

It sounds like the carriers have an incentive to brick stolen phones, not a disincentive as the summary states. If a stolen phone results in another phone sale (to the person who's had their phone stolen) this doesn't sound like a disincentive to me.

Don't underestimate the cell phone carriers - if such a stolen phone registry were to be implemented in the USA, the carriers would make sure that all off-contract phones got put on the list automatically, eliminating the used phone market. They'd justify it with some reason like "to prevent fraud" or "old phones cost too much to support on our network" -- kind of the same reasoning they use to justify high ETF's that still cost over $100 one month before the contract ends.

Re:Disincentive?

[JoeMerchant]

If a phone is stolen, they get another sale. If the phone is unusable after being stolen, it's less likely to be stolen, so there are fewer thefts and fewer sales.

Exactly. This is why there are consumer protection laws; yes, I know, more laws = big government, but that's not always bad. In cases like cell phone carriers where there are precious few choices and very little difference among the choices there are, having a law requiring the service provider to brick the customer's property at the customer's request only makes good sense.

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that the parts of a phone sell for more than the phone can give, especially an Apple device. Take the front/black glass, digitizer, and iPhone case. Even if the electronics are shot, just the other stuff can easily sell for a couple hundred bucks easily. As far as I know, Apple doesn't use Gorilla Glass, so there is a thriving secondary market for replacement panels, especially factory grade as opposed to Chinese knock-offs, and you can't get any more factory than stuff from a stolen device for the most part.

This is the same with laptops and bicycles. These get stolen, broken up into components, and sold for a nifty haul (cash for the fence, meth rocks for the tweakers.) Serial numbers are not really going to matter -- Shimano XTR or Dura-Ace parts are not numbered, and just breaking off and selling a complete set is more lucrative by far than trying to find a buyer for a stolen bike. With this in mind, it is no wonder why people will break a carbon fiber frame in half just to get the bike off a lock, or just go and steal the fork and wheels, leaving the frame locked in place.

Re:Disincentive?

[antifoidulus]

Why wouldn't they just buy a new sim instead of a whole new phone?

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

they brick it with the IMEI number of the phone (akin to the mac address of an ethernet card)

Re:Disincentive?

[click2005]

It would be easier to pay a few politicians to pass a law requiring it because drugs dealers/terrorists/pedos/whoever use them for some bad thing or other.

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been happening for YEARS and you notice now? I think it is, plain and simply, a bug in Slashdot. It even happened to me once (posted in one thread, and comment appeared in unrelated thread)

Re:Disincentive?

[Sinryc]

You are much to paranoid. Carriers can, and do block stolen phoens based on their IMEI numbers in the USA.

Re:Disincentive?

[Malvineous]

I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but in Australia you generally don't buy a phone. You buy a plan from a telco, and the plan comes with a free phone. So a stolen phone means the owner will sign up for a new plan and get a new phone, which you, the telco, have to pay for. So as a telco, if you can keep someone on the same plan with the same phone for as long as possible, you save money.

Hence reducing theft means Aussie telcos can spend less on buying phones from Apple or whoever.

Re:Disincentive?

[hedwards]

On what grounds? Receiving of stolen goods is presumably illegal in Australia the way it is in pretty much all other countries and I doubt very much that they're bricking phones that haven't been reported stolen by the owner.

Re:Disincentive?

[dutchwhizzman]

because both the SIM and IMEI of the phone itself get logged. If the police or a secret service of some sort later starts looking for you, they will search for either one. Also, phone taps are usually issued on the person and all their known IMEI, SIM and landline calls. This means that in case of a tap, you'll want a phone that can't be associated to you in any way.

Re:Disincentive?

[similar_name]

On the grounds that the post I was replying to suggested they could be liable if they were not bricking phones so that they could make money selling phones to replace stolen ones. That it motivated them to resist taking steps that would discourage theft. Now I don't necessarily think such a class action suit would be valid, I was just running with the idea 'what if they were liable'. My post was less serious in my head.

I doubt very much that they're bricking phones that haven't been reported stolen by the owner.

I doubt that very much too. I don't think anyone thinks they are be bricking stolen phones that aren't reported.

Re:Disincentive?

[nospam007]

"...or stolen, I still have to pay something for a new phone."

As well as all those who would have bought a stolen phone but can't because of this.
Bricking phones for good is good for business IMO.

Re:Disincentive?

[mwvdlee]

So if you buy a plan from a telco and your phone gets stolen after a few weeks, you can just cancel the plan immediately at no charge and buy a new plan?
Somehow this seems unlikely.
In the Netherlands you can also buy a plan with a free phone, but the plan lasts one or two years and cannot be cancelled. The telco's pay for the phone simply by hiking up the price of the plan. I think this is pretty much how "free phone" plans work all over the world.

Re:Disincentive?

[rohan972]

You buy a plan from a telco, and the plan comes with a free phone.

If you don't need the phone you won't sign a fixed term contract, you'd be on month to month, or possibly pre-paid. They include the phone in the plan to lock you in for two years. Those little stickers under the model phones in the store that tell you the minimum total cost - they mean it. It's not a free phone.

Re:Disincentive?

[vikisonline]

This is all backwards logic.

Ok if they brick the stolen phone, then whoever was to buy/use the stolen phone now has to buy a used one, or buy one from telco. And there is one less phone in the market.

If the phone is not bricked, the original owner must buy a phone either used or new from telco. There is one more phone in the market.

I would think they would prefer the one less phone in the market. And neither guarantees a sale as in either case a used phone could be bought. So doing either is really pointless, but one is decreasing the available number of phones and hence increases demand. So The ethical choice is actually better for telcos.

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the only viable excuses American/Canadian cell carriers have (EU and AU will block stolen phones) for not doing this is that Americans are too stupid to.

Truth, go back to the TDMA and CDMA days before GSM. When someone reports the device stolen, the device is deactivated, but because the cell phone is still in the system, the thief could always call back in and reactivate it if they know the customers information (which in the US is the last four digits of the SSN) most of which can be found if they also stole their wallet. In those days the device would still work up until it was power cycled.

Now with GSM, the "ESN" is the sim card, not the IMEI. When a phone is reported as stolen, they send a kill signal to the sim card which "burns it", destroying the subscribers personal information stored on it. It does nothing to the device.

To blacklist a GSM device, the carriers don't have the option to do this except at the switch level, which means that every switch has to deny if the IMEI is in the central blacklist, making things more complicated. It also has one other problem which is more unique to Americans than others... stolen or inactive devices must still be able to call 911, which means they have to change how the switch works, eg "if 911 called, allow, else check blacklist"

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, if M$ can block your xbox because of cheating or what they deem as cheating them phone operators should be blocking phones from the cell network.

Re:Disincentive?

[rtb61]

The plan does not come with a free phone. The plan comes with a phone that you make payments on built into the connection payments contract. After you phone is stolen you must continue to make payments and it is up to you to organise a replacement phone. http://help.telstra.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/17260. If you choose to buy a second hand replacement phone then you should go here http://www.amta.org.au/pages/amta/Check.the.Status.of.your.Handset to make sure it is not stolen. Of course you can pay extra, for premium care ie handset insurance policy and they will replace a stolen phone.

Note that is an internationally registered numbered so phones are bricked in all countries that co-operate.

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with big government -- and I know this is a shock to everyone who wants to make big government a party-lines issues -- has nothing to do with regulation and everything to do with redundancy. In the US we have the FDA, DEA, and the ATF (and probably other agencies) regulating what I can eat or otherwise put into my body. Why do we need 3+ agencies? Why do some of them need law enforcement capabilities? Doesn't the FBI/Marshal Service/Secret Service/etc. provide sufficient enforcement of federal regulations? Why does the DEA get to make rules about what doctors can prescribe -- isn't that why we have the FDA? Why does the ATF get to bypass FDA labeling rules for products intended for consumption by humans? My problem is big government has little to do with regulation and everything to do with redundancy.

I also wouldn't mind mandatory sunset on all new laws, to be sure that we still care about past regulations/agencies/etc. enough to affirmatively renew them, but the problem I se with "big government" is much more about the plethora of independent agencies than whatever specific rules they've been authorized to create.

Re:Disincentive?

[shitzu]

Lots of talk about bricking. They don't brick them. They blacklist the IMEI. When a phone wih a blacklisted IMEI tries to connect to the network the service is denied. Until you realize that you can go to a basement workshop and bave the IMEI changed for 5â....

Re:Disincentive?

[kakaburra]

if 'X loses a phone to a thief who sells it to 'Y', and 'X' buys a new phone, this isn't a new sale. 'Y' would have bought a new phone if there was no stolen phone available to buy.

Re:Disincentive?

[shitzu]

The electronics are not shot. The article is misleading. They do not brick it. They blacklist the IMEI and that does not allow the phone to make calls in a given network. The phone works fine. That is done in a lot of countries - for example in mine. There are two ways around this - basement phone repair workshops that change the IMEI for a few bucks (model specific, can't be done with all phones) or exporting the stolen device. In my country the border is always less than 250km away, Australia is a bit more isolated so this might be a little more difficult there. Anyway - the phone isn't bricked, they do not have some magical killswitch, electronics are not shot.

Re:Disincentive?

[kbg]

But won't the service provider see then 2 phones with the same IMEI? So they can then just blacklist the new SIM card of the thief.

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be easier to pay a few politicians to pass a law requiring it because drugs dealers/terrorists/pedos/whoever use them for some bad thing or other.

Think of the children!!!

Re:Disincentive?

[Anne Thwacks]

Yes, but you are clearly smarter than most American Telcos.

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about reading the entire context of the thread before you reply?

Re:Disincentive?

[marky_boi]

what tripe!!! all the above is done in AU.
A blocked IMEI can still call 112 the international emergency number as well as 000 the local equiv of 911.
Each carrier keeps a local copy of the stolen register and updates regularly and the phone IMEI is then blocked ***at registration*** to the network not on a per call basis if it is used at all.
One thing Au has over the US is only 3 networks and not a patchwork of carriers, this makes things rather easier.
The AU example if I remember correctly was a Govt. mandated requirement, ie. do yourselves or we will make it law.....

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not bricked, it's blocked by the carrier.

Which is pretty stupid because it's easy to clone an IMEI into another phone (they do it in China all the time) and the IMEI is even printed on the outside of the box your phone came in.

In other words, assume everyone knows the IMEI of any phone and can load it into their phone and get you, a legitimate customer, blocked from the carrier.

Re:Disincentive?

[gnasher719]

if 'X loses a phone to a thief who sells it to 'Y', and 'X' buys a new phone, this isn't a new sale. 'Y' would have bought a new phone if there was no stolen phone available to buy.

You are counting phones, not money. If X owns a phone worth $500, and a thief steals it, Y will buy it for maybe $50, while X pays $500 for a new phone. Y wouldn't have bought a $500 phone at full price, but a $50 phone.

Re:Disincentive?

[SkimTony]

I think the parent poster was suggesting a class action suit in the US, on the grounds that Australia has been doing this for ten years and US carriers haven't.

Note that while in Australia they probably aren't bricking phones that weren't reported stolen, I'm not sure that'd be the case with US carriers.
: We're not making enough money.
: Well, I've heard that some people, when their two year contract runs out, just keep their phones, instead of signing new contracts and getting new ones!
: Well, the problem is that sometimes, phones will still work, even after two years. What if those phones stopped working, say, a month or two after the contract expires?
: Brilliant! Waitress, another round of kickbacks for my friend and I!

Re:Disincentive?

[GrayNimic]

The electronics are not shot. The article is misleading. They do not brick it. They blacklist the IMEI

Unfortunately, "bricking" rarely means what it used to - now it generally seems to mean "unable to be used for (the speaker's) primary usage case" (usually a software-based broad denial of access to functionality) rather than the former meaning along the lines of "damage to hardware such that the device cannot function to any significant extent, and would require hardware component replacement/repair in order to regain that functionality".

Re:Disincentive?

[SkimTony]

And carriers can, and do, use this database as an excuse to prevent people from re-using old phones instead of buying new. Paraphrased from a conversation a friend of mine had with support for her carrier:
        : My phone broke, and my contract isn't up for another six months. However, I have my previous phone. Can you reactivate it so that I can use a phone until my contract runs out and I can get a new one?
        : Well, it looks like that phone was reported stolen, so I can't activate it. You can buy a refurbished phone from us, though. They're slightly less expensive than buying a brand new phone for full price, and since no one wants to buy a refurbished cell phone, we've got tons!
        : How could this phone have been reported stolen? It's been in a drawer in my apartment for a year and a half.
        : I'm sorry, once it's on the list, you can't get it removed without spending two weeks in line waiting to talk to the Wizard. But we have these refurbished phones. I can transfer you to sales if you like.

Re:Disincentive?

[zippthorne]

The suggestion was not that the phone company was receiving the stolen phones and selling them to new customers. Just that every phone stolen, regardless of what happens to it after that, must be replaced by the owner if they want to continue to have a phone. This may be at the owner's expense, or possibly insurers are covering it.

The question is the number of phones that wouldn't have been stolen, if every phone reported stolen was bricked at the owner's request.

If it simply never occurred to them to even offer this, that's one thing. But if they are refusing to do it because more stolen phones means more new sales - even a small amount - that is very wrong and ought to open them up to liability for replacing every phone that is stolen. The existence of such a program in Australia is, prima facie, evidence that the former case does not apply.....

It might not even need to be a class action, either. If the phones are typically replaced by the insurance companies, then they have an interest in investigating this policy as well....

Re:Disincentive?

[tompaulco]

If a phone is stolen, they get another sale. If the phone is unusable after being stolen, it's less likely to be stolen, so there are fewer thefts and fewer sales.
That is not necessarily the case. A phone is a couple of hundred dollar investment. If my phone was stolen, I wouldn't necessarily have the wherewithall to go purchase another one. The same with home TVs and stuff. I may buy a 52" TV as a luxury item for my family. If someone steals it, then I can't just replace it. It was a one time luxury purchase that I probably won't be able to make again for years. This is how the theives become the "haves" and the middle class becomes the "have nots".

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a phone is stolen, they get another sale. If the phone is unusable after being stolen, it's less likely to be stolen, so there are fewer thefts and fewer sales.

This makes little sense. If phones are easily usable after being stolen, they are more likely to be stolen and contribute to a blackmarket in stolen phones therefore REDUCING sales. Also, if it is likely that you phone is going to be stolen consumers will be less likely to buy an expensive phone, thereby reducing phone prices and virtually killing the market for high end expensive phones.

Look at any product that has a high "pilferability" score and invariably people will only buy the minimum quality level that functions. Check out the bikes most kids ride on college campus.

Re:Disincentive?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a phone is stolen, they get another sale. If the phone is unusable after being stolen, it's less likely to be stolen, so there are fewer thefts and fewer sales.

Exactly. This is why there are consumer protection laws; yes, I know, more laws = big government, but that's not always bad. In cases like cell phone carriers where there are precious few choices and very little difference among the choices there are, having a law requiring the service provider to brick the customer's property at the customer's request only makes good sense.

Except this makes no sense whatsoever. If you just spent money on an expensive phone, and did not buy the phone theft/loss insurance, you are going to be out $500 (more or less). Would that motivate you to do it again, if you knew such theft was very common? Of course not.

Theft does not = more sales. Theft = less sales, particularly of anything remotely "high end". If you know your phone is going to get stolen/lost you are only going to buy a cheap prepaid and not worry about it when it's gone, like I do with my kids.

Re:Disincentive?

[shitzu]

First of all - how do they know which IMEI is cloned and which is original. Secondly - maybe i just cloned my IMEI - they have no link to the stolen phone, the previous IMEI can not be accessed. And third - the other phone might be in a different network.

Re:Disincentive?

[cdrguru]

Ethical? Come on, think of the thief here.

You go out on the street and intimidate some poor sop into handing over their phone. Some folks resist mightily and even in peacable Australia, this can lead to some risk for the thief. In Australia I would hope the police might take it as a personal affront to have such a thief operating in their area, so there is that risk as well.

In the US this level of crime is beneath notice for the police so there is no chance of getting arrested. Maybe if you are trying to sell your stock of 500 phones at a table on a street corner there is a little bit of risk.

In exchange for this trouble and risk the phone company promptly disables the phone? What? Why would they do that? How is a thief supposed to have a phone, anyway? Their credit is no good and their finances aren't stable enough for a regular bill in the mail. I guess a prepaid phone might work, but where's the fun in that?

In the US it is much simpler. The phone continues to work and sometimes the original owner keeps getting the bill.

Re:Disincentive?

[kbg]

1) Well the phone with an IMEI which connected at a later date is the cloned one, or just have some human operator check to see which is which. Hint: The one with the prepaid SIM card, no the one with an actual account.
2) You should never have to clone you own phone.
3) Somehow my phone company can bill me wherever I use my phone in any network, so it can't be to hard to also use each others IMEI blacklists.

Re:Disincentive?

[mjwx]

So if you buy a plan from a telco and your phone gets stolen after a few weeks, you can just cancel the plan immediately at no charge and buy a new plan?
Somehow this seems unlikely.

I think you've misunderstood the GP.

The contract is for the service, the "free" (sarcastic air quotes) is not core to the contract, rather it's an addition. So if you lose the phone, you still have to pay the contract for the service and any MRO (Mobile Repayment Option) you have reaming despite not having the phone you're repaying. The telco is required to give you a second SIM card free of charge however.

What the GP said, is you can get a new contract (essentially an extension) which gives you another "free" phone.

This whole system is positively retarded, the free phone isn't free, rather you pay for it over time. Essentially you've bought the phone on a loan and have to repay that loan regardless of what happens to the phone. Further more it only serves to obfuscate the true cost the services the telco's provide.

Re:Disincentive?

[shitzu]

1) I seem to remember a case in Europe where thousands of phones were blocked because they all had the same IMEI due to some manufacturing error and one got stolen.
2) But i should have the right to do so. Its my phone and i should be able to do whatever i want with it.
3) billing is done by sim. And no - its not hard to use eachother"s blacklists. But the legal proceedings are costly and client relations are tricky if the IMEI is in a blacklist you as an operator can not control. Sooner or later you block your own client because of someone else's error and he has to prove he is not a camel.

Re:Disincentive?

[peetgr]

In my country (South Africa) my mobile provider (Vodacom SA) allows for blacklisting the SIM card and then the IMEI (no calls) once you have a police case number for the stolen phone, and they can block the IMEI on 2 of the 4 networks (the biggest networks, Vodacom and MTN). So the phone would be useable on the other 2 networks. Not very good, really. All 4 networks have roughly the same contract/specials rate, so it won't really be an issue of the thief to use/sell the phone for use on the other networks. Or even pawn it with a prepaid SIM card that works to prove it works. I wonder how you get a lost phone blacklisted, they don't say anything about that. Perhaps just go to the police and log it as a stolen phone. I have insurance on both my and the wife's cellphones (Blackberry 9300, Motorola Droid 1). It's not that expensive, really worth it. Although I've never lost a phone, and never had one stolen.

Re:Disincentive?

[kbg]

1) And the problem is? The phones where faulty, and should be replaced at no cost. 2) Yes you should have the right, but you don't have the right to clone somebody else IMEI number. You can of course buy a another phone and clone that one. Let me put this in an analogy. You have the right to modify your car to some extent, but you don't have the right to clone somebody else license plate on your own car. 3) Thats a problem for the phone companies to solve. Somehow billing companies can use all the credit card companies blacklists without major inconveniencing their customers. "Legal proceedings are costly", so what, thats the cost of doing business. You are talking about this like it's a hard problem to solve, it is not.

Re:Disincentive?

[Dewin]

...kind of the same reasoning they use to justify high ETF's that still cost over $100 one month before the contract ends.

T-Mobile pro-rates ETFs. My wife and I are changing plans with them in a couple of weeks to save $50/mo, but it'll be costing us $50 per line in ETFs on the current plan (presumably because the new plan is unsubsidized and the existing one isn't). The reason we're waiting two weeks is because we're right on the cut from when their ETF goes from $100/line to $50/line.

I believe there was a class-action lawsuit against some other carriers (Verizon I think?) about ETFs that basically forced them to pro-rate ETFs as well, so I don't think this is exclusive to our carrier.

Re:Disincentive?

[hawguy]

...kind of the same reasoning they use to justify high ETF's that still cost over $100 one month before the contract ends.

T-Mobile pro-rates ETFs. My wife and I are changing plans with them in a couple of weeks to save $50/mo, but it'll be costing us $50 per line in ETFs on the current plan (presumably because the new plan is unsubsidized and the existing one isn't). The reason we're waiting two weeks is because we're right on the cut from when their ETF goes from $100/line to $50/line.

I believe there was a class-action lawsuit against some other carriers (Verizon I think?) about ETFs that basically forced them to pro-rate ETFs as well, so I don't think this is exclusive to our carrier.

Verizon prorates the ETF as well, but unless they've changed their proration amount lately, their $350 smartphone ETF only gets prorated down to $120 by month 23 of a two year contract.

http://consumerist.com/2009/12/washington-to-verizon-wireless-can.html

Re:Disincentive?

[HappyPsycho]

You forget most phones are subsidized, the money is from the contracts / users.

The telco still holds the original owner with the contract and can potentially get more money from the thief (or the eventual buyer of the phone). So yes there is a disincentive to brick the phone.

Of course I am going with the assumption that the eventual buyer is someone who otherwise would not buy the phone at its normal price. The telco has already lost money on the original phone sale (that they hope to make back on the original contract), if they can get more bang for their buck (more use out of the phone) why not?

disincentive?

[starblazer]

Don't you mean incentive? Considering it's another sale...

Telco Bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

Figures where their priorities lie.

Violent

[Anonymous Coward]

reduces violent crime

Is violence that associated with phone theft?

Re:Violent

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, yes. Violence is a pretty common part of everyday life in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, LA and many parts of NYC.

Re:Violent

[reve_etrange]

Do you typically hand over personal possessions to anyone who asks?
Muggings at knife, gun (or fist) point are violent crimes.

Re:Violent

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting robbed at gunpoint is a violent crime. I know two people robbed at gunpoint for their cell phones.

Re:Violent

[Ethanol-fueled]

The summary is wrong. People who publicly use their phones in a rude, annoying manner cannot annoy those around them into beating them to a bloody pulp after their phones are stolen.

So yes, phone theft reduces violent crime.

Re:Violent

[mosb1000]

I've lived in two of those cities and never been mugged. I'm not saying they aren't dangerous, but it's not a part of every day life.

Re:Violent

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you the "gangsta thug" mugging innocent people?

Re:Violent

[similar_name]

I understand that muggings are violent I just wonder how much bricking stops your typical mugger from still wanting your wallet and how much it stops opportunity theft when someone sets there phone down and walks away from it for a moment.

Re:Violent

[petman]

Why? It seems to me, if the only thing the thief wants is a cell phone, it would be easier to just snatch one of the hands of someone off the street or in the subway and run. Fact is, most people don't protect their phones as tightly as their wallets.

Re:Violent

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats been happening in San Francisco lately. Usually accompanied by such things as a blow to the face, or a macing.

Re:Violent

[hawguy]

I've lived in two of those cities and never been mugged. I'm not saying they aren't dangerous, but it's not a part of every day life.

You don't have to have been mugged to have violence be a part of everyday life. There are many parts of my city that I refuse to go to at night, because it's known to be dangerous. There are other parts that I avoid even in the daytime for the same reason. There are many nice ethnic restaurants in those areas that I'd like to go to but in general, I don't because I don't want my car broken into or to be mugged myself.

Re:Violent

[Anonymous Coward]

A beat-up junker to drive, and dress-down Goodwill clothes for being seen in. Problem solved.

Re:Violent

[jamesh]

I understand that muggings are violent I just wonder how much bricking stops your typical mugger from still wanting your wallet and how much it stops opportunity theft when someone sets there phone down and walks away from it for a moment.

The problem with stealing a wallet is that it might turn out to be empty (and if you flash your wallet around so others can see it's contents, you're an idiot). As soon as you see someone's phone you know what it is and roughly how much you can get for it. If it's a good phone that you can easily get some money for then you might take the risk of robbing the owner. If you know you won't get anything for it because a stolen phone will be bricked before you can sell it, you won't.

Nobody is saying it will stop all violent muggings, just that it does make a difference.

Re:Violent

[similar_name]

Fair enough. I'll concede the point.

Re:Violent

[wygit]

Bingo. You just described a violent crime. Not VERY violent, but violent nonetheless.

Re:Violent

[king neckbeard]

I would think that it wouldn't affect the rate of muggings all that much, just the rate at which cell phones are taken in muggins, just like easily cancelled credit cards would reduce the rate at which muggers attempt to use those after they mug someone. Muggers often won't know what kind of cell phone you have until they mug you, and there are probably bigger clues to a good target. The most obvious to me would seem to be a nice gold watch, as well as general attire. That said, despite the stereotypes, I seem to recall the most common victims of mugging (and most violent crime except for rape) to actually be poor black males in the US.

Re:Violent

[Anonymous Coward]

Going there broadcasting, Yuppie Foodie with your white earbuds, and socks and sandals is what get's you mugged.

Open carry, Guarantee you wont get mugged in the worst part of town.

Re:Violent

[Lumpy]

Most macings are done by police to innocent non violent people.

Re:Violent

[517714]

"Theft" is the word used throughout the article, robbery was never mentioned by the interviewee, it was an off-topic and obviously clueless suggestion of the reporter in the last paragraph. I suspect the author gets punched because he is an asshole and people take his phone with the intention of shoving it up his ass rather than stealing it.

Let's examine the potential impact on violence: You mug someone. Do you let them keep their cellphone so they can dial 911, 000, 999 or whatever the local emergency response number is? No? Then there won't be fewer robberies (violent acts).

The difference in the value of the "transaction" is the fence value of the phone which is typically under $20 since there aren't many items one would receive from the victim that are more traceable than a cellphone. That is a very small disincentive to the robber who is also taking a wallet, watch and ring. The thief will leave the iPhone sitting on the bar - perhaps Apple should do their testing in Australia!

Re:Violent

[Hadlock]

I left my blackberry in a Wendy's during a working lunch once. I realized I'd left it in the restaurant by the time I got to the car, but by the time I got back to my seat at the restaurant it had disappeared. Ended up getting a touchscreen smart phone. I really miss having a physical keyboard on a phone without a shit-ton of crapware installed :( This was before cyanogen was a reliable thing.

Re:Violent

[Anonymous Coward]

You could go to those parts of town if you wanted to. The problem is that people who are mugged look like victims. Intimidating people aren't mugged.

Re:Violent

[ColdWetDog]

Quit watching so much TV, it's bad for you.

Re:Violent

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's your stats - Philly has just shy of one /homicide/ per day. Mugging is definitely part of everyday life for those cities. You can that's not the same as everyday life per citizen, but that's more illuminating of what citizenship means to you.

http://www.phillypolice.com/about/crime-statistics/

Re:Violent

[ArsenneLupin]

The problem with stealing a wallet is that it might turn out to be empty

Nowadays, at least it will contain some credit cards. And maybe the mugger can coerce the owner to give up the pin...

Or observe where the owner is going to/coming from. Nobody goes with an empty wallet into a bar...

Re:Violent

[BitZtream]

Thats just because you're a bigoted idiot :) Even the most dangerous parts of DC aren't really all that dangerous when you look at the actual numbers rather than sensationalist media reports and the odds of anything actually happening too you are slim to none ... well, unless you do something to cause someone to beat the shit out of you because they realize how you look down on them.

Re:Violent

[snero3]

couldn't of said it better myself.

most people, I find, who think like this have never lived or even been to the areas they are afraid of.

Re:Violent

[reve_etrange]

Your demographics are correct, but the Australian data does show a significant effect. Or Australians are just getting nicer.

Re:Violent

[Anonymous Coward]

Bigoted idiot? If someone will attack you based on the way they perceive how you feel, that person is dangerous beyond reason.

I found out that I was viewed as arrogant and condescending in high school because my depression and isolation led me to have very few interactions with people. The thought that my social ineptness could cause someone to beat me senseless in certain areas makes me afraid to visit new places and people. Being afraid to socialize doesn't help me gain new social skills. Congratulations, you are contributing to breeding another bigoted person that thinks that certain areas and demographics are nothing but trouble.

Re:Violent

[Anonymous Coward]

And you can realize this how? Your a mine reading thug.

Re:Violent

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The problem with stealing a wallet is that it might turn out to be empty (and if you flash your wallet around so others can see it's contents, you're an idiot).

But what if the wallet is empty?

Re:Violent

[jamesh]

The problem with stealing a wallet is that it might turn out to be empty (and if you flash your wallet around so others can see it's contents, you're an idiot).

But what if the wallet is empty?

Then you are wiser than us all

every stolen phone is a potential new sale

[Joe_Dragon]

sounds like game stop.

Re:every stolen phone is a potential new sale

[houghi]

In Belgium you can still buy phones that are not locked in and you did not buy from a carrier. You have stores that sell insurance on your phone, so a stolen phone does not mean an extra sale.

Still they do not use it very often for various reasons. It costs money to put a phone on the list and with the lifetime of a phone model it is not interesting enough. Also it is trivial to change the IMEI number.

If I were a criminal in Australia, I would start an IMEI change chop. People assume your phones are not stolen as it is unpossible to use the phone. Let them make a phonecall with their sim card and they will know it works.

Re:every stolen phone is a potential new sale

[BitZtream]

You have stores that sell insurance on your phone, so a stolen phone does not mean an extra sale.

So the replacement phone comes from ... magic land? It doesn't get 'bought'?

You're confused, the fact that by paying for insurance you're just prepaying for your next purchase doesn't mean a new phone isn't bought, it just means you don't think things through far enough to realize you're being swindled by buying insurance.

Re:every stolen phone is a potential new sale

[mjwx]

In Belgium you can still buy phones that are not locked in and you did not buy from a carrier.

You can do this in OZ too, in fact you can import them from Belgium if you really wanted to :)

But a lot of Aussies are idiots that think their contact phone is "free".

If I were a criminal in Australia, I would start an IMEI change chop

What do you mean by "if you were a criminal".

I can walk into any shopping centre, find a phone repair stall and they'll do it for A$20. You'd have plenty of competitors.

So cell carriers, just do it

[cultiv8]

Profit!

Re:So cell carriers, just do it

[cultiv8]

Hate to follow-up on myself, but it should be: 1) Brick cell phone if stolen 2) ? 3) Profit

Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[petman]

Aren't the carriers subsidising the phones they sell? I thought they make money mostly from the contracts. So it seems to me they would have an incentive to reduce phone thefts since this would mean would have to spend less on the subsidies.

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[Dayze!Confused]

They subsidize when you sign a contract, in mid contract you don't get a subsidy with your new phone.

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't the carriers subsidising the phones they sell? I thought they make money mostly from the contracts. So it seems to me they would have an incentive to reduce phone thefts since this would mean would have to spend less on the subsidies.

This is true only if u got mugged at the very end of your contract and is elligible for upgrade. Otherwise, u will have to pay full (unsubsidised) price for replacement.

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[king neckbeard]

The price of the phone is rather insignificant in comparison to the money made from a contract (and I refuse to believe that the listed retail price isn't total bullshit. It makes no fucking sense for a dumpphone and an iPod touch to cost less than an iPhone), and even if the new phone is subsidized, it generally involves extending your contract.

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but the carrier generally don't get money for a new phone sales even if they do buy a new phone. Carrier make money for the service and lose some money to pay for phones so they sign up for their service. If a person already has the service, what incentive is there to encourage them buying a new phone when their is no profit for them? It's quite simple why carriers don't brick lost phones. It's too much hassle (in terms of support). Support for US carriers is generally crap. Providing better support cost more money (albeit a minor amount compared to how much they make).

Greed, incompetence, lack of motivation; pick one as any one of them is equally likely for these companies.

Note the following scenarios though:

1) phone is misplaced / lost / stolen without being noticed
do they brick?
if yes, hassle if phone is found/recovered.
if no, high possibility it ends in hand of somebody you don't want it
This is the most common scenario

2) phone is actually *knowingly* stolen like through a mugging
do they implement a system to deal with this?
if they do, cost support and money for a relatively small occurrence (in comparison)
if they don't, doesn't affect them at all as most likely customer is still in contract so they get paid no matter what
Guess their choice...

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[deniable]

Not in Australia. They'll do deals. You won't get a free phone, but you won't pay full price. I've seen it and Telstra, of all people, made a decent deal for a replacement unit.

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[shitzu]

It is not that difficult to find out. All it needs is a little math. You take the price of a phone and add 2 (or whatever) years worth of unsubsidized plan or pay-as-you go. In my coutry it is ALWAYS cheaper in the long run to buy a phone and pay as you go. The subsidy racket is just meant for people who can't do the math - "oooh, an iphone costs only $199 - i'll get that!" and they end up paying $2000 for it over the course of next two years.

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[tepples]

In my coutry it is ALWAYS cheaper in the long run to buy a phone and pay as you go.

In mine, the three major carriers charge the same monthly rate for pay-as-you-go service and contract service.

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[shitzu]

And they charge the same for a contract with no phone and for a contract with a "subsidized" phone? And can you terminate them both on he same terms? Trust me - it is never the carrier who pays for a "subsidized" phone - it's the customer.

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[tepples]

And they charge the same for a contract with no phone and for a contract with a "subsidized" phone?

These carriers don't offer a contract without a phone. With no phone, they offer only the right to terminate service without an ETF.

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[shitzu]

What country, which 3 carriers?

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[tepples]

USA. VZW, AT&T, Sprint. I even walked into an AT&T store and mentioned the discount on the monthly bill that T-Mobile offers for buying the phone up front (then called "Even More Plus", now apparently called Value Plans) to an AT&T sales rep, and he sounded surprised that any carrier would even offer a thing like that. But I'm wary of signing up with T-Mobile because AT&T still has a chance to buy T-Mobile's network.

Re:Do carrier make money off phone sales?

[shitzu]

I admit that the information on the AT&T site is overwhelming and i do not get heads or tails from it.
But it looks like you could buy a phone upfront (e.g. iphone $649 ) and pay 50$ monthly (unlimited calls, texts and data):
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-plans/pyg-cell-phone-plans.jsp?_requestid=12274
Or for example an iphone plan - $199.99+$36.00, 2 year contract (unlimited voice and messaging, DataPro 4GB for iPhone 4S) at $134.99 monthly

Now for the math part over 2 years:
Phone bought and an "unsubsidized" plan: 649+24*50=1849
Phone "subsidized" by AT&T (actually by you): 199.99+36+24*134.99=3475.75

I might have got the information wrong though.

In my home country I buy an unlocked phone upfront (iphone for 600€ - yes, they are quite a bit more expensive here). I have an unlimited data plan and i pay for the minutes and sms's without any plans. My total monthly bill is generally around 20€ ($27) unless i've been abroad. I could have an iphone package from the operator with which i would pay 99€ for an iphone upfront but then i would pay around 60€ or more monthly for two years. I did the math and decided otherwise. And i can switch providers at any second (and they know it). And i can buy a prepaid data sim when i am abroad and use it because my phone isn't locked.

Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[Anonymous Coward]

It will continue to work outside Australia. Phone theft still occurs here.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[JimboFBX]

yeah but nobody wants to buy a phone with Australian auto-correct.

#TODO: insert funny English -> Australian translation

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[clockt]

I occasionally browse through the pawn brokers shops, looking for old hand tools. A few years ago it was common to see 3 or 4 display cases filled with second-hand mobile phones stacked 3 deep. The Motorola Razr was popular then, and well represented. Over the course of about one week they all went away; I wandered in to one shop not far from the centre of town to be greeted with a desert of black, dusty velvet. Not a single phone left in the place.

Two things occurred to me then: The government had done something good (!) and pawn brokers are a thinly disguised mechanism for returning stolen goods to the economy.

I'd known about the ability to block a digital phone since the change from analogue, and it always struck me as ridiculous that the telco wouldn't do that as a matter of course: they are service companies, they lock the asset into their system, and they make the contract a personal thing. Isn't it good customer service to say "Sorry your phone got stolen, but rest assured the thief will get no benefit from it. Come to the show room and lets talk about a replacement..." Yes, you may end up paying for two phones and might feel personally disempowered, but the knowledge that the long arm of the telco can reach out to the thief and stop his gloating in a heartbeat has some real value.

Credit Card companies do it with stolen cards don't they? What's the difference? The stolen item has a unique identifier, the database has a flag on said number and when it appears in the system the alarm bell rings and it refuses to service it. The stolen asset is suddenly less valuable, or possibly even a liability if we take it to it's logical conclusion.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[cyrano.mac]

No it won't. When a cell phone is bricked, it becomes useless. You confuse operator block with anti-theft block. The first can be undone, the second one can't. In Europe, the system of bricking a stolen phone has been abandoned many years ago. The reason is not commercial, it's purely technical. To trace a stolen phone, the IMEI number is used. But since the IMEI can be easily changed, you risk bricking someone else's phone. That happened years ago to some 6.000 phones which had the same IMEI, cloned from a Danish phone. When the Danish phone got stolen, the Danish operator bricked it, resulting in 6.000 Spanish phones no longer operating. And since you can't undo it, they had to be replaced. The one responsible for cloning 6.000 phones with identical IMEI numbers was a Dutch phone trader. Anyways, there is no problem with cell phone theft over here, except people declaring their lost or broken phone stolen, just to get insurance to pay for it...

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[green1]

> I'd known about the ability to block a digital phone since the change from analogue

Question. What difference does it make if it's analog or digital? The fact is that the carrier has a way of identifying that phone on the network with a fair degree of reliability (otherwise they wouldn't be able to bill you for your calls) so regardless of if it's analog or digital they still have a way of blocking it.

The ability to block cell phones didn't start with phones going digital. It started when phones no longer required you to tell the operator who you were before you made a call. Unfortunately the willingness to use such a feature is a completely different problem...

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[swalve]

Make sure it includes references to 220v being superior, American health care and how not to eat the cracker. That'll account for a good 25% of the dialect.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[swalve]

It's probably too hard to get all the cell phone companies to cooperate.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Two things occurred to me then: The government had done something good (!) and pawn brokers are a thinly disguised mechanism for returning stolen goods to the economy.

There's a reason the two main chains of pawn brokers around here were known as 'Crime Converters' and 'Theft-O-Rama'. (Cash-Converters and Trade-O-Rama.)

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[Anonymous Coward]

>>> That happened years ago to some 6.000 phones[...]

Three-digit fractional precision seems a little bit excessive for an integer quantity.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 240V, not 220V.
America doesn't actually have healthcare, just a shambolic parody of same.
It's not a "cracker" , it's a biscuit.

Fail on all three counts, please come again.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[tibit]

+1 Insightful. I completely agree.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[tibit]

You can't undo programming a bunch of bytes in an EEPROM? I doubt that the phones used OTP memory for that. It'd probably take a minute with download cable and factory service software to undo the anti-theft block...

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[Whiteox]

Damnit. It's more than 240V - More like 255V and beyond. It's a scam by the power providers to increase voltage past 255V so Solar feed into the grid systems won't work.
Why? Because then they don't have to pay as much subsidy to the home producer. The Gov backs this because they too have to pay a subsidy to the owner.
All in all, I've lost over $500 per quarter because of a high grid voltage.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[Anonymous Coward]

Spanish numbering, for example is backwards. for six thousand with 2 decimals, they would say 6.000,00. of course, they would say that we're backwards, so w/e. i'm guessing cyrano isnt a native english speaker, instead one that numbers like that.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[deniable]

Yeah, because tourists / foreign travellers are the most likely people to buy a hot phone in a pub.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[king neckbeard]

I understand it's arbitrary, but the English system seems more consistent with conventional usage of commas and periods. Digit group separators have a smaller break than decimal separators, just like a comma has a shorter break in the written word than the period.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[jibjibjib]

Nice conspiracy theory.

The Australian standard voltage is 230V +10% -6%. So 255V is outside the allowable range. If they deliberately set the supply to 255V, they'd be exposing themselves to a huge lawsuit. Any 250V-rated components or insulation that failed, causing damage or fire or injury, would all be their fault.

Also, by setting the voltage that high, the power used by other loads (some types of lights and motors, and various other things) would increase noticeably. Generating that much extra power would be more expensive than paying the tiny number of people who have solar feed-in systems.

tl;dr: if you're getting 255V, it's a technical problem rather than a conspiracy, and you should be complaining to your electricity provider rather than to random slashdot readers.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[Whiteox]

I have complained. They sent out 2 guys who took measurements that confirmed the Inverter's digital readout. Then they sent another guy who put up 2 data meters; one on the pole leading to my house and another on the local transformer. The problem is real and I'm doing something about it.
FYI: At peak load 6~9am and 4~7pm, the solar power does feed into the grid system. As soon as the peak power drops in the neighbourhood, the system switches off.
Also, there were verbal guarantees that voltages up to 260V will not damage household equipment. That I don't believe.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[BitZtream]

You do realize your story is unbelievable for a couple of reasons, right?

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[Whiteox]

It is not unbelievable and it is happening. Why do you disbelieve?

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[GuldKalle]

True, but a comma is larger and easier to notice. Especially when drawn with a pen(cil). :)

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[lazybeam]

Sounds like your grid is too small to have solar on it: not enough load to keep it within limits; lowering the voltage could cause brown-outs during the peak times. My solar feeds the grid all day and so does my neighbour's: his feeds so much he actually ends up with a credit bill every quarter!

I have heard this story on Whirlpool a few times, starting here. (Links to other threads)

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[Whiteox]

Thanks. If I don't get results from Endeavour Energy, then I'll make some noise. I have an Aerosharp 3KW. The last guy who came said that some inverters can be tweaked to get past the 255v limit.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[Bogtha]

The fact is that the carrier has a way of identifying that phone on the network with a fair degree of reliability (otherwise they wouldn't be able to bill you for your calls)

Billing isn't connected to the phone, it's connected to the SIM card. If you put your SIM card in a friend's phone and make a call, you get billed, not him.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[tepples]

This is true of networks that use SIM cards (GSM) or CSIM cards (CDMA2000). GSM requires that the SIM be on a removable UICC, but a lot of CDMA2000 networks program the subscriber identity directly into the phone. I don't know about Australia, but in the United States, two of the big three networks (as well as MVNOs that use their networks) use CDMA2000 without CSIM.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[tepples]

Then perhaps you need to start writing your periods like the Chinese and Japanese do: as tiny circles.

Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked

[mjwx]

yeah but nobody wants to buy a phone with Australian auto-correct.

Don't come the raw prawn mate. Ozzie auto correct is beaut, best auto correct in the world. Now have a tinny and stop yammering on like a dingbat.

imei changer..

[ltcdata]

In argentina, there are a lot of "grey stores" that change the imei number of any cellphone in a few hours. If it can be done here...

Re:imei changer..

[Anonymous Coward]

Network operators are moving to having a white list of IMEI's that are actively in use, as well as locking the SIM-card number to a particular IMEI.

They also disable SIM card's if they haven't been used for several months (France/Mobilcarte). Other countries even require some form of ID to identify a PAYG SIM card.

They were even locking down IMEI numbers of obsolete hardware.

Odd... I thought Sprint did this?

[rabtech]

Maybe I'm not up to date but last I checked Sprint does in fact blacklist the ESNs of stolen phones.

I know that the only safe way to buy a used Sprint phone is to have the seller meet you at the Sprint store and lookup the ESN to make sure it isn't blacklisted.

Verizon uses CDMA so they have the same situation (no sim card, just built-in ESN) so I don't know why they wouldn't offer the same service.

IIRC, the CDMA carriers get batches of valid ESNs from their vendors... they won't allow any unknown ESN onto their network so hacking the phone to show a different ESN is less than straightforward... you can't just make up any random number.

Re:Odd... I thought Sprint did this?

[cyrano.mac]

It just takes a little while on any CDMA network to sniff a valid ESN and clone that. Of course, you 'd want to sniff in one part of the country and use the ESN in another part. As long as the ESN's don't show up on the same cell, there's no problem. If they show on the same cell, one of them gets kicked off...

Re:Odd... I thought Sprint did this?

[Anonymous Coward]

If two showed up at the same time in different parts of the country that will get caught too... If it isnt no one is bothering to look...

That's funny, I thought everyone does it

[slimjim8094]

I read this and went "this is news?" Then I read the supposition that nobody outside of Australia does this and I lost it. I vote this the stupidest article in many months.

I thankfully have never had a phone stolen, but my mother and several of my friends have. The carriers range from AT&T to Verizon to T-mobile to Sprint to Boost mobile, to Orange and O2 in the UK. Universally, they called up the carrier and the IMEI number has been blacklisted, or the equivalent for Sprint/Verizon/CDMA phones. Banning the IMSI, which is tied to the phone, makes it useless since it is no longer more than an iPod Touch (or equivalent Android device). Those bans are effective within a country, since they share lists with each other. One of my friends has actually gotten her phone back when the guy went to the local T-Mobile store and tried to buy a prepaid SIM and it didn't work. The store called the police from the back room and kept the guy busy, and they came and picked him up. Apparently it's policy for them since it happens pretty frequently.

This is all in the backwards US, with our relatively small GSM contingent. In other countries it's clearly much easier, since there's just a list.

Finally, Wikipedia talks about this like it's old news. It's literally in the third sentence of the article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMEI#Blacklist_of_stolen_devices

Re:That's funny, I thought everyone does it

[drinkypoo]

I read this and went "this is news?" Then I read the supposition that nobody outside of Australia does this and I lost it. I vote this the stupidest article in many months.

Amen! My lady tried to tell me about this article, and then I explained GSM vs. competing CDMA implementations and IMEIs to her and how at best you might steal a phone from ATT and use it on T-Mo or vice versa but probably not.

Re:That's funny, I thought everyone does it

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you please call my local AT&T store and tell them that it's old news? When my wife's iPhone 3G got stolen, they just shrugged and asked if she wanted a new (at the time) iPhone 4. They never did anything other than sell her a new phone, even after we asked if they could block the old phone or see if it were in use.

Blacklisting != Bricking Re:Odd... I thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm not up to date but last I checked Sprint does in fact blacklist the ESNs of stolen phones.

Yeah, blacklisting and bricking are two very different effects.

99.999% of Blacks are better human beings than you

[gavron]

Here's a way to improve the world. Get rid of racist foul-mouthed jerks.

'Cell Carrier' Network

[philmarcracken]

Considering the dominant carrier in Aus has been Telstra for the last 10 years in which time it has enjoyed a monopoly under - wait for it - former US CEO leadership then losing potential revenue from bricking stolen phones was simply an oversight.

Anyone who lives here knows that Telstra would never knowingly pass up an opportunity to do business unethically.

Re:'Cell Carrier' Network

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, Sol was the only US CEO of Telstra. They were just as bad when the Nuclear Physicist Ziggy was running the shop. Bigpond (Telstra's ISP division) had a banner on your account usage page saying something to the effect of "BigPond Usage. It's not rocket science" around the time the usage meter was so inaccurate as to be not only days out of date, but also gigabytes out as well.

There's an incentive you just have to find it.

[outsider007]

I have a hard time believing they do this out of the goodness of their hearts.

Phone theft much easier

[SuperKendall]

My guess is they'd rob them anyway and whatever they get that is good.... so much the better

Not really - there are lots of phone thefts because it is so easy. The victim is distracting themselves, showing you exactly what you will get, and furthermore holding it up for you to grab.

With any other theft you have no idea if the target is really worth it, what they really have... and you have to get it off them, when they may already be on guard to start with.

Be eliminating any profit from the one singularly easy theft to pull off, I could easily see crime rates being reduced.

Apple does use gorilla glass

[SuperKendall]

Apple doesn't use Gorilla Glass, so there is a thriving secondary market for replacement panels, especially factory grade as opposed to Chinese knock-offs

That's wrong in a few ways. First, they do use gorilla glass - in my experience the phones are really sturdy, unless you have the misfortune of a corner hitting something very hard. But it's not like they are going to scratch from keys in a pocket.

Second, there is no such thing as a "Chinese kickoff iPhone 4 screen". This is because the LCD is RIGHT under the glass, basically adhered to it. The glass breaks, it means also replacing the LCD.

I agree the parts could be worth something, but I don't know how much a thief would think about that angle since very few people are buying extra parts (way fewer then with bike parts), and Apple is usually very lenient about replacing broken phones (even without Applecare I got a phone I had cracked totally switched out, though YMMV on that one).

Re:Apple does use gorilla glass

[alannon]

Sorry, this is incorrect, knowing from personal experience. The vast majority of the time, breaking the glass (and digitizer) does not break the LCD. The LCD is right underneath the class, but most of the time that the glass breaks, the LCD does not. The two are adhered around the edges, but not on the actual surfaces.

Re:Apple does use gorilla glass

[SuperKendall]

The vast majority of the time, breaking the glass (and digitizer) does not break the LCD.

Yes, I know that. I never claimed it did.

The LCD is right underneath the class, but most of the time that the glass breaks, the LCD does not. The two are adhered around the edges, but not on the actual surfaces.

But the end effect is the same regardless of exactly how the two are adhered. You cannot as a user replace just the glass. I looked, there are some things that claim to work but really they are solutions meant for the 3GS. You have to buy the glass/LCD as a bundle.

DId you actually replace just the glass yourself? If so where did you buy that from.

Re:Apple does use gorilla glass

[alannon]

EBay for $15, just the glass and digitizer, no LCD.

Re:Safest Place for Smart Phones

[Anonymous Coward]

how do u receive calls?

well

[strack]

its because here in australia, we have politicians and regulatory agencies that arent balless little bitches on the take for the company. well, less so.

The devices are not bricked, just IMEI-blacklisted

[Craig Ringer]

All this is is a list of blacklisted IMEIs that's shared between most (not all) carriers. The phones are still perfectly functional when used in other countries with compatible UMTS/GSM frequencies, and on carriers that don't use the IMEI blacklist.

Some carriers do subscribe to the IMEI blacklist but take so long to update it that they might as well not. I'm looking at you, Vodafone.

Not only can stolen phones be sold overseas, but it's pretty trivial to rewrite the IMEI on many phones. This is a disincentive to casual theft, but not much more.

Phone Tracking

[Belial6]

A number of years ago, we were all told that the phone companies needed to track our phone for the 911 service. That way they could find us if we called, but didn't know where we were. We were assured that it wasn't so the government could track our location. As of today, I have not heard about a single case where the tracking was used for the phone owners benefit, and every time I have called 911 from my cell phone, the person on the other end needed me to give them my location.

It's simple. We already know that the phone companies know exactly where the phones are when they are used. Phone theft should not be a crime that can successfully be committed. If your phone is stolen, you should be able to call the police, and your cell carrier, and the next time that the phone comes on the grid, a police officer should be showing up to make an arrest. I realize that this would put a short term work increase on the police, but it would subside pretty quickly when it became clear that most every cell phone theft lead to an arrest.

Re:Phone Tracking

[dutchwhizzman]

They won't get closer than a rogue triangulation between cell towers to pinpoint your location. Enough to make you more suspect in a criminal case, but not enough to find you without expensive tracking equipment on site, a lot of time from the tracking people and still quite some luck (if you are moving). Compare that to the list of things the police usually won't put any effort in for if reported, and you'll know why this doesn't happen.

Re:Phone Tracking

[unkiereamus]

A number of years ago, we were all told that the phone companies needed to track our phone for the 911 service. That way they could find us if we called, but didn't know where we were. We were assured that it wasn't so the government could track our location. As of today, I have not heard about a single case where the tracking was used for the phone owners benefit, and every time I have called 911 from my cell phone, the person on the other end needed me to give them my location.

I don't know about you, but every time I've called 911 from a land line, the operator has asked me to tell them my location, too. Redundancy is important, a database error or a SNAFU with the GPS chip can't be risked when it comes to true emergencies. You don't want the ambulance to show up across town from your gunshot wound because of your new neighbor Robert'); DROP TABLE Residences;.

So why then have it, if they're just going to ask anyhow? Because sometimes they can't ask, consider a hypothetical person having an unsupervised stroke, they manage to dial 911, but can't offer any intelligible speech, depending on what form of aphasia the person is struck with, and how good the dispatcher is, they'll either send an ambulance or a police officer out to the location provided technologically.

TL;DR: Your tinfoil hat clashes with your jacket, take it off.

Re:Phone Tracking

[Belial6]

It would be far more efficient for them to verify the address than to have you try and give it to them. Particularly in cases where the caller doesn't know the specific address.

If their claim that the tracking is for 911 is true, then cell phone theft should be trivial for the police to act on.

Re:Phone Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

GSM is TDMA, which requires precise distance-based timing offsets to work. So you know the distance to the nearest several towers (3 or more in urban areas, usually two along rural highways) to the nearest 550m at all times. You can't grab an exact position in an instant, but it's not hard to track someone down over time without DF gear. It's all about money -- if police departments and courts were bankrolled from solving crimes instead of ticketing infractions, it would happen all the time.

Re:Phone Tracking

[BitZtream]

As of today, I have not heard about a single case where the tracking was used for the phone owners benefit, and every time I have called 911 from my cell phone, the person on the other end needed me to give them my location.

Sigh, you're confusing procedure and reality.

I hit a deer about 3 weeks ago in a rural area of North Carolina at about 1am, hilly area with bad reception. Took 3 911 calls just to get the conversation going. When finally connected you are asked your location (even when you're at home) as confirmation to make sure they don't blindly send someone to the wrong side of town while you die. The same thing happens at any major medical procedure for instance, you'll be asked several times what procedure you're having to make sure no one fucked up and is going to cut off you're leg when you were supposed to have your ingrown toenail fixed.

Needless to say, before I could actually tell them my location, the cop showed up.

Regardless of where you call 911 from, they're going to ask you where you are. Address records can be wrong, they want to confirm. Its common sense really.

Re:Phone Tracking

[unkiereamus]

If their claim that the tracking is for 911 is true, then cell phone theft should be trivial for the police to act on.

While I'm not wholly unsympathetic to this viewpoint, no, not really.

The thing you've got to consider is that most police departments are in fact vastly understaffed for their workloads. Or at least for their potential workloads.

Let us assume that your nominal PD has the man power to follow up on a tip from the Cell company (And that the laws concerning warrants etc permit them to Stake definitive action on those tips.)

The cell provider advises them that stolen phone W is active on the network, and has reported it position as (X,Y,Z) corresponding to street address U. The PD rolls a unit to address U, and discovers that it's a Starbucks, with 16 customers, and 4 employees. What then?

A reasonable person would then say, well, let's call the number now associated with stolen cell phone W, the person who answers is obviously the thief (/recipient of stolen goods). The problem, though, is that the same laws that protect the tinfoil hat brigade from government intrusion protect our criminal from warrant-less search, so the cop then has to get a search warrant for our bad guy.

Let's say this is a small town, so there's no issue in identifying our baddie, the cop probably went to school with him. So he calls to dispatch, identifies the guy, dispatch calls the brass, who agrees and instructs dispatch to detail a unit to find the local judge/magistrate/justice of the peace to sign a warrant so the unit on scene can search this bad guy and prove him to have stolen property.

Great! After just over an hour, or so, we've got our criminal, right?

Well, no, not really. Now we've got to establish that a) all the procedures outlined above were followed carefully. b) This guy stole the phone, c) failing that, he willfully received stolen property.

Oh, and let us not forget d) during the hour that 1 officer was detained identifying and following the suspect (assuming he didn't spend the whole time mooching on Starbuck's WiFi while pretending to write the Great American Novel), a half hour of another officer's time in going back to base to get the paperwork, then driving out to the courthouse/judges' house/the fancy new restaurant the judge's wife really wanted to try, nothing happened that might have demanded the attention of those persons.to better effect.


What I'm getting at here is that it's non-trivial, once you consider the complexities of the situation.

Perhaps, once a national pattern of expecting such efforts from the criminal justice system is created, the rate of phone thefts will drop off to such a degree that not only will there be no additional workload on the system, but that there might even be slightly less.

How likely do you think that expectation is, though, if the process above has to be followed? And how much worse service are you willing to accept from your local police force to make it happen?

Re:Phone Tracking

[Anonymous Coward]

This is probably why lazy-ass cops don't bother enforcing laws anyways, the cell-phone scenario being besides the point. In my town, unless it's a store robbery or murder case it seems the police would rather not be involved. Traffic enforcement is very lax too, even though you'd think they would have some system to streamline the processing of such cases. (There are way too many bad drivers, so there is some large degree of failure on the law enforcement end.) It's rare that they setup speed traps or catch stop-sign runners and other reckless drivers unless somebody in the department presses for them to make quota. In additon lazy cops, the department is also understaffed due to budget problems, which obviously doesn't help any.

I'm sure it's not too far different elsewhere in the U.S.

It's a more likely scenario that the cop will be at the coffee shop. Your criminal walks in with the stolen phone, sits right next to the police officer, does whatever, walks out with a coffee. After that, the cop is still at the coffee shop and reading a newspaper. Nothing ever happening enforcement wise, ever.

Re:Phone Tracking

[unkiereamus]

I obviously don't know the police department where you live, so I could be completely off base about this.

I think that your viewpoint is a pretty common one, and rather understandable in it's way, because it's hard to appreciate all that a police force does. The vast majority of it doesn't reach public attention, usually only, as you say, the big flashy store robberies, murders and active traffic enforcement efforts. Could I recommend that you get yourself a scanner (should be able to pick one up cheap from your local radioshack), or depending on where you live, you might be able to find someone who streams it live. I think you might be surprised at how busy they are.

As for the matter of the cops sitting in the coffee shops. Here's the thing, cops are entitled to lunch breaks, too (Though not really a break, since they can be obliged to drop everything at a moment's notice and respond to a call.), but of course, since they're in uniform, it's quite easy to spot them lounging around indolently, as it were.

Again though, I don't know your specific circumstances, and while I'll defend cops in general, I'm not so dewy eyed as to imagine that there are no bad cops, and more-over, bad departments. I just think that a great many of the complaints about cops tend to spring from people not understanding the peculiarities of what they do.

Disclaimer: I'm not a cop, I've never been a cop, I never want to be a cop. I am, however, a paramedic, and as such tend to work a bit more closely with cops, and understand their job a bit better than most folks.

does not stop the theft completely

[Anonymous Coward]

afaik this doesnt completely stop the stealing of phones - lots of teens by iphones cheap in sydney that have been dubiously acquired. what you dont have as the buyer is a guarantee that your new phone will keep working.

Carriers

[Frankie70]

I have no idea about Australia, but in most countries phones are sold by phone shops - which have nothing to do with carriers. Carriers also sell phones, but a majority of phones sold have nothing to do with the carrier.

Re:Carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in australia and i have never once bought a locked carrier cellphone, i bought my iphone and my galaxy s2 both unlocked, chose my carrier later.

Re:Carriers

[sc0ob5]

I can't back it up with figures but I would hazard a guess that most people would buy their phones/plans direct through their carrier, locked to that specific carrier. The major carriers have stores located everywhere. It is possible to buy an unlocked phone from a phone store like All Phones, Crazy John's, Telechoice, etc. and they don't seem as numerous. No one I know has bought a phone/plan from one of these places. In regards to the phones being carrier locked it's now easily possible to have your carrier unlock your phone and the carriers are required to do so. If you are on a contract you must keep paying though. Don't know if that made things clearer or more muddy.

Re:Safest Place for Smart Phones

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBTYHLHANDGTFO

Not only australia

[jwijnands]

Over in Europe it's also common practice to blacklist imei numbers.

Uhh, Japan?

[Kagetsuki]

In Japan as soon as you contact the service provider they remotely lock the phone, start tracking it, and if you've reported it stolen they report its position to the police.

Re:Uhh, Japan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. The news here is pretty-much that the US *doesn't* do this. Everyone else does.

Re:Uhh, Japan?

[Anonymous Coward]

And they tell you about it, too! *rolls eyes*

Re:The devices are not bricked, just IMEI-blacklis

[91degrees]

Most mobile phone theft is casual theft though. Rewriting the IMEI requires a certain level of investment (a computer) and presumably at least basic computer competency. You need to know what to do, and where to get the software.

Getting rid of the thieves without the skills or equipment does have a significant effect.

They do not brick

[cheekyboy]

I found a phone, and it wasnt bricked. I just made sure to pull out the orig SIM, and go 100% wifi, no cell networks at all.

Eventually after a month, even after the phone was 'unlocked' to allow other cariiers, they barred/blocked the phone based on IMEI number alone.

It wasnt bricked, just 'barred', and not usable, except for wifi.

Re:They do not brick

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what you're supposed to do when you find a phone, right?

Re:They do not brick

[Hope Thelps]

You know what you're supposed to do when you find a phone, right?

Write a submission to Slashdot saying it might be an iPhone 5 prototype cleverly disguised in an old Nokia case?

Re:They do not brick

[Man Eating Duck]

You know what you're supposed to do when you find a phone, right?

cheekyboy is a dickwad and a thief. But, if you find a phone, don't give it to the police. They will probably do nothing. The two times I've found phones I've texted someone ("Dad") in the contact list, explaining the situation and how the owner can meet me in person. One of the times I even got a very nice finder's fee from the obviously well-off owner. The other one was a crappy phone which belonged to a student, so I declined the offered (nominal) compensation.

Both people were surprised and happy. It cost me very little effort, and I hope that someone will do the same for me if I should ever lose my phone.

Re:They do not brick

[mollymoo]

Theft by finding. What a nice person you are. What would you want someone to do if they found your phone?

Re:They do not brick

[Anonymous Coward]

Try returning it, or handing it to the police next time

Re:They do not brick

[SenseiLeNoir]

I agree with what you have said. Once my wife lost her phone, and someone called the contact "home" to tell us they found it. I gave a nice little "finders fee" as a thank you, which the guy tried to refuse, but I told him to use it to take his missus out for a dinner on my behalf.

So, yes, if i do find some ones phone I would do the same thing.

Sir, you are a true gentleman, like the person who found my wife's phone.

Re:The devices are not bricked, just IMEI-blacklis

[Anonymous Coward]

All it requires is black/grey market competency. You just need to know a guy (or know a guy who knows a guy) who'll do it for a few bucks.

No good in Europe

[Builder]

This is fine if you're an island thousands of miles from other large population centers. The problem with Europe is that you're never more than a few hours drive from the next country. So even if every carrier in the UK agreed to block stolen phones, I can be in France within 120 minutes of leaving my house and I can sell them there.

This would need to be Europe wide to have any effect here.

Re:No good in Europe

[sroensberg]

This is fine if you're an island thousands of miles from other large population centers. The problem with Europe is that you're never more than a few hours drive from the next country. So even if every carrier in the UK agreed to block stolen phones, I can be in France within 120 minutes of leaving my house and I can sell them there.

This would need to be Europe wide to have any effect here.

Actually there is an world wide database (http://www.gsmworld.com/our-work/programmes-and-initiatives/fraud-and-security/imei_database.htm) with an blacklist. But as long as there are carriers in neighbourging countries, who would rather sell airtime than block their customers, its is not going to be effective.

Re:No good in Europe

[DaveGod]

For it to have a massive effect, yes. But it still ups the level of organisation required to profit from the theft, may increase the number of people taking a cut, it still puts some limit on the marketability of the phone... Surely if it is so convenient for criminals to go over to France to sell their wares, people buying phones in France are taking trips the other way and finding that their phones don't work.

The vast majority of efforts to combat crime are an exercise in weakening the crime payoff table.

Different Markets for Second Hand Phones

[Anonymous Coward]

It is possible the the US carriers are right about changing the IMEI. Australia is a small country with a relatively low crime rate. This means there might not be the critical mass needed to get a network going where stolen phones get passed along to someone who can change the IMEI. In the US, if such an IMEI blacklist were set up, it might just result in networks getting set up where people who steal phones know someone who knows someone who can change the IMEI.

Re:The devices are not bricked, just IMEI-blacklis

[91degrees]

I suspect most of the criminals don't know such a guy though. The main reason is because mobile phone theft fell, and the most obvious explanation is that it's because of this.

Jail broken cell phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when have carriers bricked jail broken phones. A customers a customer. Doesn't seem like they should care. Can anyone point me to an article about that.

Grain of salt

[rust627]

Yes the Australian carriers, can disable phone, however, the phone i had stolen, and the 2 that have been stolen from my son, well we were told that although they can disable the phone , they normally don't and probably won't. All they normally do is disable the SIM. Yes they have had the technology to do this for 10 years, no in real terms they do not do it.

Re:Grain of salt

[jezwel]

I've had a phone stolen, when I rang my carrier (3) I gave them the police report number and told them the IMEI needed to be blocked. No asking or questioning if they could do it, just tell them it needs to be done.

Hit up the TIO if you have these kind of issues in future.

Australia has other issues

[dell623]

Even if the phone imei gets blocked before the thief manages to sell it off on eBay or gumtree (kind of like craigslist), he can still sell it off as a phone to use overseas - ebay Australia is full of those listings of phones that are basically stolen since the imei is blocked in Australia. And the larger issue is that petty theft is such a low priority for Australian police that there is virtually zero risk of getting caught.
This is a classic example that is entirely consistent with my experiences: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/ipad/thief-gets-away-with-stolen-ipad-because-police-wont-act-20110524-1f1zi.html
Even when you have video footage of theft, police pay little attention to the matter, which means even repeat offenders are unlikely to get caught.
I got robbed in a real estate rental property scam. While I was stupid to fall for it, I had felt safe because I made a deposit into an Australian bank account, and there are very stringent ID checks before they let you open a bank account here. I later found that the scam had been running for years. The scammer had withdrawn the money from an ATM in Australia and would have been on video, it wasn't someone overseas. The same people had scammed or tried to scam many people but had been getting away with it for years, despite video footage of different incidents, a local bank account and despite them stupidly using several stolen credit cards and ID documents in brick and mortar retailers instead of buying online.

Stealing a laptop or smartphone or iPad in Australia carries little risk unless you're caught in the process. You can even leave a nice trail because the police will never follow up. I hardly think this is much of a deterrent for thieves. Also with the massive immigrant population in major Australian cities, any self respecting thief will find it easy to simply send stolen goods overseas to be sold.

Fyi

[bogie]

The aforementioned iPod Touch has a neat remote wipe feature. You can go to apple's site, see exactly where your iPoe is on a map, remote lock it, send a message to the screen, and initiate a remote wipe of all your user data. It requires of course the thief be on wifi but I'm sure sooner rather than later they would have that online. Pretty neat for free.

http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/built-in-apps/find-my-ipodtouch.html

It is very dangerous when the battery broke down i

[Anonymous Coward]

It is very dangerous when the battery broke down it may hurt someone!

Why don't directly install a GPS Exterenal Antenna on the phone that can trace the location of the phone?
 

16-bit

[tepples]

The last guy who came said that some inverters can be tweaked to get past the 255v limit.

Wouldn't this require switching from an 8-bit inverter to a 16-bit inverter?

Unlocked phones

[tepples]

IIRC, the CDMA carriers get batches of valid ESNs from their vendors... they won't allow any unknown ESN onto their network

So how do unlocked phones purchased from stores other than the carriers' own stores work on the CDMA2000 carriers?

What is an "Android pod touch"?

[tepples]

Banning the IMSI, which is tied to the phone, makes it useless since it is no longer more than an iPod Touch (or equivalent Android device).

Actually, what is the equivalent Android device to an iPod touch? Archos 43 comes closest, but it doesn't support multitouch nor Android Market.

Re:What is an "Android pod touch"?

[slimjim8094]

No idea. I was trying to avoid angering the Android fanbois. I say that as someone who's not an Apple fanboi by any stretch - the Android fanbois can't seem to wrap their head around an area where Android doesn't "beat" Apple.

Re:What is an "Android pod touch"?

[asdf7890]

That is fanbios in general. I have an android device but accept it (both the device, the OS, and the standard apps) is far from perfect. To some people me picking at the flaws somehow makes me anti-android. It is like a religious thing: their choice is right in all ways, other choices are false gods, and by making their choice but finding fault I'm some sort of heretic. Every tech choice seems to breed this sort of thing. Phones and portable media devices (Apple, Google, heck even Blackberry and Nokia still have fanbois despite their respective falls from grace in recent years (if anything their troubled market positions makes their fanbois more strident)), games consoles (Nintendo, Sony, MS), gaming option in general (console, PC, not at all), desktop/laptop/server OS (Windows, Linux, BSD, OSX), sub-OS variant (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, RedHat, CentOS, Slackware, ...) , 8-bit machines back in the day and when donning the rose tinted spectacles of nostalgia (Spectrum, Commodore, the Beeb). Car geeks/ners do it. Sports geeks/nerds do it. It seems to be human nature to closed minded and defensive once we've made what we think is a good decision, presumably there is some survival imperative involved (which seems logical to me: in many circumstances making any not-completely-stupid decision and getting on with acting on it has survival benefits over standing around thinking deeper).

Month-to-month costs the same

[tepples]

If you don't need the phone you won't sign a fixed term contract, you'd be on month to month, or possibly pre-paid.

On the three biggest U.S. carriers, month-to-month service costs the same as 2-year contract service, and one would be dumb not to take the free phone.

Re:Month-to-month costs the same

[networkBoy]

this depends on your usage.
I am in the US on one of the major carriers, but on a pre-paid phone.
I used to have a plan phone, but I did the math and I was paying ~$2.40/minute based on (plan costs) / (average usage).
I switched to a pre-paid and I buy $100 worth of minutes at a time (expire in one year, renew for a year with any minute adds like a $10 card). I now pay ~$0.12/minute and use that $100 card in about 7 months.

If you are a heavy user or text a lot then a plan phone makes sense. If you are a very light user then the pre-paid plans work out well. Pre-paid phones cost as little as $30, which while not free, is still heavily subsidized.
-nB

Re:Month-to-month costs the same

[rohan972]

On the three biggest U.S. carriers, month-to-month service costs the same as 2-year contract service, and one would be dumb not to take the free phone.

Not always. If the phone you want only comes "free" on a higher plan than your phone use warrants you can be better off buying your phone outright and staying on the lower plan. If prices change within that two years the ability to switch plans or carriers can save you money. If your phone breaks while you are on month-to-month you can immediately get a new phone by going on contract.

The only reason companies offer a "free" phone with a contract is because they make more money by locking you in for two years than it costs them to provide the phone. If you want the phone that's great, but it isn't always the best way to go just because the call plan has the same monthly charge.

Re:Month-to-month costs the same

[tepples]

If prices change within that two years

Do prices for entry-level smartphone service actually change in that period? Prepaid smartphones have only been around for about a year. And in order to save over the typical contract subsidy for smartphones, the other plan would need to be at least $20 per month cheaper.

the ability to switch plans or carriers

I don't know about the Australian market, but in the United States market, unless you're switching back to a carrier that you had used before, switching carriers means getting a new phone. A typical unlocked GSM phone works on exactly one carrier: AT&T. CDMA2000 phones do not work on GSM networks nor vice versa, and even within a particular system, different carriers use different bands of spectrum; most GSM phones don't support the band where T-Mobile has its 3G.

Re:Month-to-month costs the same

[rohan972]

Do prices for entry-level smartphone service actually change in that period? Prepaid smartphones have only been around for about a year. And in order to save over the typical contract subsidy for smartphones, the other plan would need to be at least $20 per month cheaper.

I have used low end plans but wanted a phone that only came "free" on a higher plan. Phone companies offer phones on contract as an incentive to move you off plans they don't want to offer anymore. I don't specifically know about smartphone service, but I had a job for a few months selling mobile phones years ago. They are very keen to have you on contract I assure you and the only reason I can think of is that they make more money that way. And yes, prices will change and also service and conditions.

I don't know about the Australian market, but in the United States market, unless you're switching back to a carrier that you had used before, switching carriers means getting a new phone.

No, here you just switch sim cards. Only pre-paid phones are locked.

A typical unlocked GSM phone works on exactly one carrier: AT&T. CDMA2000 phones do not work on GSM networks nor vice versa, and even within a particular system, different carriers use different bands of spectrum; most GSM phones don't support the band where T-Mobile has its 3G.

That's a shitty system.

Why do the payments on the phone not stop?

[tepples]

The plan comes with a phone that you make payments on

So why do the payments on the phone not stop (that is, why doesn't the monthly bill go down) once the phone is paid off at the end of the twenty-fourth month?

Re:Why do the payments on the phone not stop?

[hhbuitrago]

Do you think the carriers will willingly, and out of the goodness of their hearts, lower the bill and give money back to you?? How can you expect them to say no to that free revenue?

Over here a given phone gets cheaper the bigger the plan is. And generally every year you can can update your phone for a reduced price, but if you don't change, or you supplies your own phone, the cost of a given plan remains the same. No company in the world would let such easy money go out the door.

"It reduces violent crime"...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, they could always go crazy and actually LOCK PEOPLE UP for a long time (i.e. however long the majority of the PUBLIC think they should be locked up for)... wouldn't that be a crazy idea.

And I bet that non-whites are MASSIVELY over-represented among the muggers who steal phones from people...

Anybody want to bet?

The bank stops billing once I pay off a mortgage

[tepples]

Do you think the carriers will willingly, and out of the goodness of their hearts, lower the bill and give money back to you??

Yes, for the same reason that the bank stops billing me once I pay off a mortgage. I expect carriers to itemize the phone subsidy and the voice and data plan as separate line items on my bill, much as the cable company itemizes decoder box rental as a separate line item. T-Mobile has "Even More Plus" plans that itemize phone payments and service, but its acquisition by AT&T hasn't been fully called off yet.

Extra sale cancelled by fence

[l00sr]

Still seems like specious logic, since the extra sale generated by the theft is (arguably) cancelled by the sale lost to the person who bought the stolen phone instead. True, the who bought the stolen phone might have bought a used phone instead, but that decreases the number of used phones for sale, which is also good for the carriers. So I doubt the carriers are conspiring to not brick stolen phones. Also, Australian carriers are presumably just as greedy as American carriers, which puts another hole in the argument.

Dangers

[Anonymous Coward]

If the method for bricking is reverse engineered, somebody can send find the IMEI number of phone and send message to the phone and brick it. So it is better that bricking is not implemented.

Prepaid dumbphone vs. prepaid smartphone

[tepples]

this depends on your usage.

I don't know about the Australian market, but all U.S. carriers that I've looked into appear to operate under the impression that all smartphone users are trying to replace a land line rather than complement a land line. Most of my calls aren't so urgent that they can't wait for an land line on which I have unmetered local and toll-free calls. So even though I might use maybe 40 minutes in a heavy month, carriers insist on selling me several hundred minutes per month in their cheapest smartphone plan. I'm currently on a prepaid dumbphone with Virgin Mobile USA because switching to an LG Optimus V smartphone from the same carrier would make my monthly bill five times what it currently is (from ~$7/mo to $35/mo).

crusher

[Anonymous Coward]

stone crusher

coal mill
Chancador
Machacadora
mobile crusher

I'm sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, i thought SlashDot was for Geeks.I don't consider myself one, nor a shady character, but it would take me few minutes and the web to find a guy to change phone IMEI. Now consider a guy whose income totally depends on crime- i believe he already has contacts for that. Enough with the conspiracy theories. Further more i believe profit percentage for Telco's from the phone sales is not so great. What I think really could be done, is not allowing for those dummy EMEIs to be registered on the network.

Re:The bank stops billing once I pay off a mortgag

[PeterWone]

You could cancel the contract and get a prepaid sim, but nobody does because at the end of the standard 24month contract everyone wants a new phone anyway so the carrier says "pick one from this list of new toys" and the dance goes on.

Re:The bank stops billing once I pay off a mortgag

[tepples]

You could cancel the contract and get a prepaid sim

In the United States market, Verizon and Sprint don't use removable CSIMs, and an AT&T representative told me the prepaid SIMs are just expensive per month as the contracts.

Re:The bank stops billing once I pay off a mortgag

[rtb61]

Funny, I expect modern phone, insurance, mortgage and any other corporate contract to be a complex as possible in order to make it next to impossible to compare one contract to another, to ensure plenty of contract wiggle space for them and generally allow them to be first order dick's baring controls forced upon them by government consumer organisations.