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

Posted by timothy on from the thanks-a-lot-jerks-at-att dept.

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."

5 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Violent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Were you the "gangsta thug" mugging innocent people?

  2. Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked by JimboFBX · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    #TODO: insert funny English -> Australian translation

  3. Re:Phone isn't bricked, its just blocked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

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

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

  4. Re:They do not brick by Hope+Thelps · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

    --
    To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
  5. 16-bit by tepples · · Score: 3, Funny

    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?