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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."
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.