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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."
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.
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.
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.
sounds like game stop.
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.
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...
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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.
It will continue to work outside Australia. Phone theft still occurs here.
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...
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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Why wouldn't they just buy a new sim instead of a whole new phone?
Monstar L
they brick it with the IMEI number of the phone (akin to the mac address of an ethernet card)
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.
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.
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)
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.
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Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
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/
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
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.
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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.
It said "windows 98 or better" so I installed Linux
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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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.
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....
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.
da da da dum indeed.
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.....
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?
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.
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.