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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."
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...
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
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
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.
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.
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.....