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It's Time To Start Taking Stolen Phones Seriously
itwbennett writes "'Find My iPhone' is neat, but it's time for smartphone makers and carriers to stop pretending their anti-theft measures are anything more than minimum viable products, says blogger Kevin Purdy. He's not the first to point this out: As reported in Slashdot, 'NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said overall crime in New York City was up 3.3% in 2012 due to iPhone, iPad and other Apple device thefts.' And now San Francisco and New York attorneys general are calling a 'Smartphone Summit' where representatives from Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft are due to meet and discuss the implementation of a industry-wide 'kill switch' system."
When a phone is stolen, another phone gets purchased. Reducing phone thefts will cut into new phone sales!
industry-wide 'kill switch' system
It's really for stolen phones .. just like the kill switch for the internet was for emergency purposes. This has nothing whatsoever to do with cutting off people's means of communicating effectively with each other.
The NSA is listening in on everything anyways, why aren't they arresting phone thieves when they use the phones?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
The best best for Android is Cerberus. Seriously, it does everything that "Find my iPhone" does plus a few things it will never do. It's free today through AppGratis http://www.droid-life.com/2013/06/06/deal-cerberus-lifetime-license-is-free-today-from-appgratis/
If you happen to have a rooted phone, there's even a ROM version which will survive a Factory Reset.
The solution can only be good if provider are the one who are force to fix the issue. You need to realize provider will allow stolen phone on their network until they are force no do to so. The main reason that explain this is that they already lost the phone, if they don't reactivate it to the person who bought it on the street/pawn shop/craigslist, the profit that could be made on this phone is lost forever...
They will know exactly where that bad boy is and who the theif is calling...
It's Apple's fault that NYC is a crime ridden shit hole. If these disgusting companies would stop making products that people actually want New Yorkers wouldn't have to resort to robbing each other! Why can't Apple and Google be more like Microsoft!
Why can't they just blacklist the phone's IMEI?
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
After a $150 deductible
Burn FAT not OIL
cut them off at the network... NYC are talking to the wrong people they need to speak to GSM and CTIA.
they do it in Europe as well the USA is very slow about this...
" Carriers AT&T and T-Mobile offer a joint database, as the carriers use the same basic networking technology. Verizon and Sprint offer a second database. By the end of November 2013, the four carriers will combine databases, and adding smaller carriers like Nex-Tech and Cellcom. Plans exist to link the US database with an international version hosted by the GSM Association to prevent stolen phones from being shipped to overseas markets and used on other networks."
The phone is bait. It should commonly lead you to criminals who have done other illegal things. A super hero who retrieves phones just so he can honeypot get to the criminals would be legit. All he'd need to do is use GPS, then call the phone when he's in range and have a conversation with his prey before closing the distance and kicking tail.
I understand why real cops wouldn't want to retrieve phones. It would be easy to spot, but they would be encountering possibly violent criminals more often. No one wants to die even if they're doing their job more effectively.
God spoke to me
You could have stopped right there. That alone would have negated a lot of the incentive of stealing phones in the first place.
That rings far too much like "guilty until proven innocent".
It's stolen property... handle it identically to that. The possessor surrenders it to the authorities at their own expense.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
... Apple, Google, Samsung, and Microsoft are due to meet and discuss the implementation of a industry-wide 'kill switch' system."
Soon to be highjacked by the job-creating content industry.
Oops, sorry, looks like you'd better stop pirating Mickey Mouse from 75 years ago if you want to make that emergency call!
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
I am from a country where all the operators adhere to the CEIR blacklists. Phones are blocked by IMEI, and it is not necessarily trivial to change the IMEI on modern phones. The problem is that most users who have their phone stolen do not bother (or know how) to blacklist. Just reporting the phone stolen does not automatically blacklist it, one has to fill out a separate form for that. If something was done so that close to all stolen phones are blacklisted, stealing a phone would immediately become a lot less lucrative. At least from my experience in Norway, phones are stolen to resell locally or for the thief to use. Effective blacklisting would make sure that stealing a phone would only be feasible for anyone who would send them to a country where blacklists are not enforced, or someoene with the equipment and knowhow on changing IMEIs. This would pretty much rule out petty thiefs.
Dvorak on Doomtech
If you wallet is stolen, you don't expect to get any cash in in back. If your watch in stolen, or your TV, you should not expect to see either again.
And if your phone is stolen, like every other object on the planet, you most likely will not see it again.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
When a phone is reported lost or stolen the MEID and the SIM card # are added to a list and cannot be used on the VZW network. Often though the first thing a
competent thief will due is turn the phone off preventing any GPS locating software to track the phone. The phone will either be sold to a person who does not
check the MEID # (and when they try and do an ESN change will be told the phone is on the lost stolen list and to please take the phone into a VZW Corp. store.)
Or they take the phone someplace like Cricket and they will flash the phone to work on the Cricket network. Another option is the phone will be parted out.
Yes, the phonemaker gets more revenue. However, the money used to fund those replacements comes from an increased levy on all phone purchasers who have coverage. So everyone with coverage pays more for phones. The extra money that everyone pays for phones means less money spent on all other possible purchases. So Apple's revenue increase is Krogers' or Target's or Shell's decrease.
We usually disregard widely-distributed costs and look at local effects. This is especially true of politicians. But those effects are real and directly affect the aggregate economy numbers.
Given that we have such tools, why would we even need a kill switch?
You may not need it. The manufacturers do... every stolen and non-killed phone is a lost sale. Pretty much like pirating music or a movie, isn't it?
(ducks)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I own a microsoft powered phone, no one wants it
What happens when "hackers" get hold of this kill switch?
Absolute Software has been in the business of tracking and recovering stolen computers for years. They've recovered nearly 29,000 stolen computers, and they've just expanded to phones - Samsung has just integrated their technology in the firmware level on the S4, with other devices coming soon. Their tracking agent will survive a phone reset and their forensic tools (deployed post-theft) mean that they can actually catch the guy that knocked you over the head and stole your phone.
http://www.zdnet.com/new-lojack-solution-for-galaxy-s4-makes-theft-meaningless-7000016433/
Unlike a software solution only, the Absolute Software LoJack system is both a hardware and software solution. Starting with the Samsung Galaxy S4, Absolute's persistence technology is built into the firmware of the S4 and cannot be removed, even if the device is restored to factory settings.
The Galaxy S4 has the technology built in now, but the necessary Absolute software solution is not yet available. When it is available, you will be able to remotely lock your device, locate it, erase the data from the device and storage card, or have the Absolute Investigation and Recovery Services Team attempt to recover it.
The Recovery Team is made up of experts from law enforcement, the FBI, the Marines, the US Army, and other government positions. To date, they have recovered 28,000+ devices (laptops and PCs) in over 95 countries.
We all know there is no security without physical security.
But let's forget about that for a second.
Even if you make it ueber-secure (not like today when in many Samsung devices the IMEI is actually in some obfuscated file in the efs partition!) and you really manage to bound each device to an IMEI you still have the challange of managing the blacklist/"nuke from the orbit" authorization list.
It costs 5-10-15EUR to send a box full with phones across Europe, and no customs at all if it's within EU.
You need to have (at least) EU-wide database. How do you manage that? What recourse you have if you bought your phone in Germany, you leave in Belgium and it gets blacklisted by an operator in Bulgaria based on some typo from a dodgy police station in village? How can you argue that (hint: they don't even use the latin alphabet in Bulgaria)?
We had enough of this country-coded DVDs and network locked phone and all the crap. Any more of this and will give (another) unfair advantage to your operator: the only safe phones will be the ones bought directly, they know for sure it's legit. Anything else is a risk.
The real way out here is just to have police go after the thieves. Even the older phones could be tracked well enough and with some social engineering (if you had access to the list of calls) you could find out who has the phone without any GPS or camera and whatnot. However, they just don't bother even if you give them the position of the phone within meters, inside a single-house and a picture of the user.
You could have stopped right there. That alone would have negated a lot of the incentive of stealing phones in the first place.
That rings far too much like "guilty until proven innocent".
It's stolen property... handle it identically to that. The possessor surrenders it to the authorities at their own expense.
Note that, in most jurisdictions, possession of stolen property IS a crime, regardless of whether or not you actually know that the property is stolen. If the DA is very busy, or honestly believes that you did not knowingly purchase stolen property, you will just lose said property. If they think you should have known, you may very well be faced with criminal charges.
Why would they "spend MANY thousands of dollars of taxpayer money on investigation, arrest, booking, court hearing/trial, and imprisonment for a $500 piece of electronics" when they could spend MANY thousands of dollars of taxpayer money on investigation, arrest, booking, court hearing/trial, and imprisonment for a $10 bag of weed?
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