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Stolen Cellphone Databases Switched On In US
alphadogg writes "U.S. cellphone carriers took a major step on Wednesday toward curbing the rising number of smartphone thefts with the introduction of databases that will block stolen phones from being used on domestic networks. The initiative got its start earlier this year when the FCC and police chiefs from major cities asked the cellular carriers for assistance in battling the surging number of smartphone thefts. In New York, more than 40 percent of all robberies involve cellphones and in Washington, D.C., cellphone thefts accounted for 38 percent of all robberies in 2011."
Welcome to the 21st Century.
The EU has had this for over a decade.
The cellphone is less of the cost than the service.
come on fhqwhgads
No problem with this list at all, as long as "stolen" REALLY means stolen, as opposed to also including the phones of people who just didn't pay their phone bill (and are being charged/collected against the ETF fees)
Carriers decide to start using the exact same technology to block users from re-selling used phones.
Yes, hi this is Jonny Law. You can pull over with your hands-free up!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
ebay should join in, since most such phones are probably sold through ebay. They should ask sellers to type in the phone number and block the sale in phone is in the database.
And not, say, keep them working and use the traces to eventually find the folks who have them? That would seem much more sensible.
Ezekiel 23:20
What I don't understand is why that much crime is going uninvestigated. Why aren't there dedicated law enforcement units working in major metropolitan areas to recover these phones? In most jurisdictions, they are valuable enough to qualify the theft as grand larceny. What's more, each cell phone has a built-in tracking device accurate to within a few meters, and have microphones and cameras built in! These aren't exactly difficult crimes to solve.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
They already blacklist imei but it's only on a per carrier basis which is obviously easy to get around simply by using a different carrier with the blacklisted phone. Having a global blacklist database is definitely a great improvement. The only two question is, will phone re-sellers also use the blacklist (like many prepaid companies that rely on the major companies network) and when can we have a global database to prevent sales to out of the country as well.
While this will cut down on phone theft, I suspect it'll also lead to a lot of 'errors' such as 'oh you changed the subscriber information attached to this phone, so we went ahead and marked it stolen...no we won't take it off the stolen list but i'll transfer you to sales so you can purchase a new one.' or 'someone called and reported your phone stolen so we bricked it, you're welcome to come in and buy a new one though.' or even 'we no longer sell your phone so we bricked it, you're welcome to come in and buy a new one though.'
steal the phone and kill the person with the phone, to have a good chance that the phone will not be reported as stolen.
Also it impacts the used phone market, since you can't be sure that the phone is stolen or not. Unless there is a easy way to match phone with owner, you can never be sure that the used phone you bought today wasn't stolen yesterday and is on the row to be blocked.
Wait, isn't this the database for blacklisted IMEI's which supposedly is international?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mobile_Equipment_Identity
What happens if someone's phone gets improperly added because someone mistakenly (or maliciously) enters the wrong number?
The new database blocks the IMEI number, a unique identification number in the cellphone akin to a VIN (vehicle identification number) in a car. The ID number remains with the cellphone no matter what SIM card is used.
10% of IMEI numbers are not unique according to British Telecom. That being said in the UK at least, if your phone gets blocked by accident, there is a procedure to get it unblocked - so all is not lost for you.
... and I'd like to report my cell phone stolen.
This is great and has been too long in coming, I'd guess most of the challenges were administrative vs. technical.
What's next? How about iPods?
Wonder how long till the Carriers use this when someone cancels their contract. Block that phone from being used with the competition and making the user buy another device..
Wtf, this wasn't done already? Phones have unique IDs, stolen ones should be tracked down and owners jailed.
If IDs are changed there will be collisions or IDs that don't exist or haven't been released from some pool yet. Somebody pays by CC, track that way. If by generic CC or time card, shut the damned phone off, tough.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What do they care? They'd rather you bring in your old phone than buy a new one, because they subsidize the cost of the new phone. A carrier's favorite customer is the one who's still using his original iPhone 1. Still paying for a data plan, using relatively small amounts of data, and they paid off the subsidy a long time ago.
It is no new technology, so it does not give the carriers any more opportunities than they already have.
It is working in Europe, you are just late to the game.
Not a good source if you're talking about modern cell phone systems.
... whose phone gets on this list by accident. Suddenly a good customer becomes a dirty criminal. I'm sure there will be no way to rectify the mistake.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Both android and iphone have the ability to be "rendered useless" by the OS maker. let me be able to set a "stolen flag" that locks the phone in a states that says "STOLEN PROPERTY CALL 1-800-XXX-XXXX to report and return" that cant be easily bypassed. I.E. restoring the iphone will not disable it, etc... this will make the street value of any stolen smartphone $0.00 instantly. THAT will fix the problem and apple could put that in place with a trivial amount of coding as they already have "find my iphone" as a part of the OS. Android on the other hand will take some work as it lacks that feature.
The phone OS makers refuse to put a simple system like this in place because stolen phones make them money.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Biggest cut on crimes in NY was whey they pursued small crimes which lead to people who committed larger crimes as well.
Get the guy that has one phone ($100) and most likely you took out a guy who robs more than one person a day (5 days times 3 phones) plus has other crimes on his account!
So when does the public get access to this database so that we can buy used phones without fear that they're stolen? There's no reason not to unless you want to kill the re-use of cell phones.
those phones will be sold in bulk to dealers on another continent
Someone who brings their own phone is likely to be a cost-conscious consumer who will switch to another company in a heartbeat for a better deal. They'd much rather have customers who upgrade every two years like clockwork because those customers will be locked in forever.
It'll never work, it'll just be picking winners and losers, as well as encouraging a culture of dependency.
Why not let the free market come up with a solution??
Thought someone had stolen some "cellphone databases", whatever those were, and had just gotten around to switching on the databases they'd stolen. Clicked because I was curious what a "cellphone database" was.
Carriers want you to sign a new two-year contract. They also aren't entirely thrilled that you can get an inexpensive second-hand phone and activate it on a prepaid plan. T-Mobile already does block a phone's IMEI if the the original owner abandoned their account with an unpaid balance (a matter that should be left to collection agencies, not handled by blacklisting a phone). Worse, T-Mobile is known to block a phone after it's already been sold and is in use by a new owner who had no way of knowing the previous owner didn't make good on their final bill. There's a whole thread about this on HowardForums.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Get a copy of the original bill-of-sale and a receipt for your transaction.
A stolen phone database sounds great, doesn't it? Just like how Trusted Computing saved us from malware and viruses and the big content providers would never dream of using such a system against end-users. Oh, right.
Here's what's wrong with this system, in a nutshell...
It does nothing to prevent theft. Fun fact: two carriers in the US already blacklisted stolen phones prior to this database, Sprint and Verizon. Hear much about thieves asking first if you're a Sprint or Verizon customer before they mug you for your phone? Neither have I. eBay is full of phones that are listed as carrier blocked or bad ESN and people still buy them. Let's not forget Craigslist, where it's pretty easy to scam people into buying useless phones (Oh, you wanted to test your SIM? Sorry, I forgot to charge the battery. Better buy this phone quick, I've had three other people interested in it!) Finally, regardless of whether or not a phone can be easily re-sold, it still has value as parts (especially with today's easily breakable huge screens). This database doesn't make stolen phones worthless, it only makes them slightly less valuable - which may actually lead to increased levels of theft.
Wireless companies will use this system to blacklist phones with unpaid balances. Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile already do this. Now, keep in mind the wireless companies still send you to collections and ruin your credit report, but that's apparently not enough. Naturally, none of the wireless companies in the US make it clear that they have these policies, so plenty of these phones still end up on the used market. You don't have to ask around much to find someone who has a horror story about purchasing an unusable second-hand cell phone, because the previous owner never paid their final bill.
So, now you've got a situation where it's a gamble to buy a used phone. Thankfully, the carriers are your knights in shining armor - they're coming to your rescue with two-year-contract subsidized handsets and full price prepaid handsets. Why would you ever want a used phone anyway, citizen? Don't you know someone had their dirty, disgusting fingers all over it?
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Good starting step, but why are they not pushing this further and making it worldwide? I do recall Europe has one big database already, they can join that and try and extend it further.
That, assuming the telco's actually block the phones in the first place.. As an ex-employer of a telecoms company in UK, I've seen first hand how certain providers ignore customer's calls or requests to block a stolen phone just so they can make money off the next sod who buys it and needs a contract...
They refused to give the kids a case number or police report number. In fact, they told the kids that if they wanted a number, they'd be happy to run the kids in for a trespassing and loitering and something about bothering/scaring my parents and then their parents would have to come get them out from being arrested. So I really think the cops were not interested in doing any paperwork at all in that case. But they were obviously bored and unoccupied enough to come out for such a trivial thing.
So I guess they can go after the guys that stole the databases now that they're switched on and traceable, amirite?
mov ax,4c00h
int 21h
I was mugged by a gang in the UK and had my iphone stolen. The police told me that the UK blocking database is a waste of time as the muggers just sell the phones to people that ship them overseas. We either need a worldwide blocking database between all phone companies or need the phone OS vendors to block the phone worldwide from being used once reported stolen. I'm sure this would be fairly simple for Apple/Google/Microsoft to implement.
If these phone really are stolen, I see no problem if we could make them explode when turned on by the thief, fence or fence customer... When you buy a hot phone, expect to loose your hand, just like what would happen to thieves in Islamic countries...
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
This happened to me. AT&T decided that the HTC One X was too new to use unlocked on Straight Talk so they blacklisted the IMEI number. I called and they told me it wasn't lost/stolen/delinquent, so I can't think of what else they could have done it for.
even criminals don't want to walk around with an phone that doesn't work as a phone
Then explain why the iPod touch still sells.
How exactly are stolen iPod touch products blocked from tethering to a non-stolen phone?
and sell it as what?
The Galaxy Player came out in October 2011. It looks like a Galaxy S and works like a Galaxy S, except for no cellular radio. It's very much like an iPod touch, and it's what I would have bought had it come out a year earlier. (Instead, I bought an Archos 43 Internet Tablet, which is the same thing with no GPS and no multitouch.)
the device physically would look line a phone
Excuse: factory second.