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iPhone Users Sue AT&T For Letting Thieves Re-Activate Their Stolen Devices
An anonymous reader writes "Following on the heels of the FCC and U.S. mobile carriers finally announcing plans to create a national database for stolen phones, a group of iPhone users filed a class action lawsuit against AT&T on Tuesday claiming that it has aided and abetted cell phone thieves by refusing to brick stolen cell phones. AT&T has '[made] millions of dollars in improper profits, by forcing legitimate customers, such as these Plaintiffs, to buy new cell phones, and buy new cell phone plans, while the criminals who stole the phone are able to simply walk into AT&T stories and 're-activate' the devices, using different, cheap, readily-available 'SIM' cards,' states their complaint. AT&T, of course, says the suit is 'meritless.'"
When I worked at AT&T as a systems engineer in SMS a few years back, we and anybody in customer care were able to perform a search by IMSI (sort of like a MAC address for cell phones). One day the IMSI search feature was suddenly yanked. Thought it was a bit strange, because one time I was able to use the IMSI search to find the new MSISDN (phone #) for a friend who'd lost his phone and it helped him recover it. Makes me wonder if AT&T just didn't want to be involved in stolen iPhonery, or if they yanked the search feature because the profits from the process (noted in the story headline) were just too tantalizing.