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It's Time To Start Taking Stolen Phones Seriously

Posted by samzenpus on from the something-worth-stealing dept.

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."

27 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. But, But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When a phone is stolen, another phone gets purchased. Reducing phone thefts will cut into new phone sales!

    1. Re:But, But... by Randall311 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You mean "free" as in the price of the insurance right? So not so free...

    2. Re:But, But... by calzones · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I keep seeing this line of reasoning on the matter here on /.

      Honestly, it's pretty fucking vapid. The marginal revenue companies get from people buying replacements for stolen products is simply not a viable business model. They may prefer not to spend money dealing with a problem they see as the consumer's and not theirs, but to ascribe some insidious plot on their part to make extra money off of people who get their stuff stolen... it's inane.

      --
      Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
    3. Re:But, But... by justthinkit · · Score: 4, Insightful
      $Phonemaker does nothing, tons of phones get stolen, $Phonemaker makes tons of replacement phones (i.e. tons of money).
      .

      Or

      $Phonemaker makes a used phone useless, no phones get stolen and $Phonemaker loses tons of money in lost replacement phone revenue.

      Can you explain how each phone stolen is "marginal", as opposed to 100%, gain? Basically, if they do nothing they find money for zero work. This model dictates exactly what they should do -- absolutely nothing. No wonder they are having a big pow-wow about it. Might need to have annual meetings even.

      --
      I come here for the love
    4. Re:But, But... by bferrell · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's not buying a new phone that is the business model.

      1.) The device is stolen
      2.) New device obtained. (some $$)
      3.) Old device is activated by someone new (recurring new $$. Here is the money for the carrier)

      Now, many many years ago, I was a cellular switching site manager (before we had the giant carrier we have now). When I learn how cellular worked, it was explicitly state the the devices had a thing called an ESN (electronic Serial Number). This was for activating the device AND stolen devices were SUPPOSED to go into a shared database that would be checked to assure stolen devices were not activated. The marketing manager was livid that such a thing could exist. Needless to say it's pretty obvious today how that worked out. There is no shared database of stolen devices in the US (North America?). There is in Europe.

      'nuff said

    5. Re:But, But... by rogueippacket · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just think it through. Ha ha ha...
      No but seriously, there is no guarantee that a user who has their phone stolen will buy that same phone again. So it's already not 100% gain, they may go to a competitor or buy a refurbished phone from their carrier. Next, assuming they do buy a replacement from you, there is also no guarantee they will buy the same model. They may buy a cheaper one which has lower margins, as many people do when they feel they were targeted as a result of owning the hottest model or simply cannot pay off their subsidy right away.
      Okay, so as a result of this theft, you may wind up selling another phone and make a few bucks - but there are no guarantees whatsoever, and this means you cannot plan around illegal activity when building your financial models. This was the point made above, the returns are simply too small and too unreliable to factor into the models when compared to something like adding new features or running a series of marketing campaigns.
      To coin a car analogy, it would be like Audi saying "Our cars are stolen the most, so we can expect greater revenues as a result" - would you buy an Audi knowing that? Or would you buy a phone from the first manufacturer who allows your car to be killed when it is stolen?

    6. Re:But, But... by Dahamma · · Score: 3, Informative

      Let's say 5% of iPhone owners have had their phones stolen over all of time (which is a large number if you think of it), that would mean for all the bullshit the company has to put up with regarding a stolen phone they would make all of 5% extra on top of their normal sales. That's ridiculous if you think about it.

      Apple made $80B (BILLION) dollars in iPhone revenue last year. 5% of that is $4B (FOUR BILLION DOLLARS!). You'd better fucking believe $4B in revenue is worth putting up with an UNFATHOMABLY MASSIVE amount of "bullshit".

      Oh, and no need for "piss poor" anecdotes - NY and SF police have stated over 40% of all robberies in their cities now involve cell phones. So yes, tons - literally metric tons - of cell phones are stolen every year in those cities alone...

    7. Re:But, But... by rossz · · Score: 4, Informative

      You can argue all you want that it's not a viable business model to not disable cell phones, but large parts of Europe already have a cell phone "kill switch" and it has virtually eliminated cell phone thefts.

      --
      -- Will program for bandwidth
  2. Are you serious? by OhANameWhatName · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Are you serious? by sjwt · · Score: 4, Informative

      LOL your so funny, cause if the Government wanted to or the phone provider wanted to they couldn't cut of your phone access any other way?

      People don't get mugged for phones much out here in Australia, all you have to do is report the phone stolen and its blacklisted.. Not even doggy pawn shops take a phone without checking that. You would be left selling on ebay, even then the buyer would just file through Paypal to get their cash back.

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    2. Re:Are you serious? by Nanoda · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      Don't be asinine. Your cellphone can already be tracked, tapped, disabled, folded, spindled and mutilated. What this is about is centralising and sharing information about stolen phones so that the utility of stolen phones diminishes to the point that you walking around with an iPhone doesn't look like an easy 200$ target to ne'er-do-wells.

    3. Re:Are you serious? by Dahamma · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because there are so many phones stolen and so many more serious crimes to investigate that the police don't give a crap about your stolen cell phone. You must not have ever had one stolen, because almost anyone who has (myself included) can confirm this complete lack of interest ;)

      If the police cared, the technology is already there to catch many phone thieves. But everyone knows they won't bother. It's much easier (and nearly free) just to make the phone a brick to discourage it in the first place than spend MANY thousands of dollars of taxpayer money on investigation, arrest, booking, court hearing/trial, and imprisonment for a $500 piece of electronics.

  3. Why is it a consumer isue? by waddgodd · · Score: 3, Funny

    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
  4. Cerberus is free today through AppGratis by technomom · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Cerberus is free today through AppGratis by pruss · · Score: 5, Informative

      This may be rather good, but I've felt rather uncomfortable with closed source apps that are track a phone or wipe data, and especially ones that can survive a hard reset, so I spent a few hours and rolled together a super-simple, no-UI app (passwords are hardcoded into the source, so I am distributing this source-only: https://code.google.com/p/roottracker/ ) that does basic phone tracking and wiping via SMS. I tried to make the source simple enough that one can easily verify the lack of backdoors.

    2. Re:Cerberus is free today through AppGratis by readingaccount · · Score: 3, Informative

      What makes Cerberus better than Prey? Someone else commented concern for a closed-source tool, whereas Prey is completely open source AFAIK. They both seem to do the same thing, just one has better marketing apparently.

  5. If VZW wont help, just call the NSA by anthony_greer · · Score: 4, Funny

    They will know exactly where that bad boy is and who the theif is calling...

  6. Blame game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

    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!

    1. Re:Blame game by clarkkent09 · · Score: 4, Funny

      We are talking about Bloomberg here, the guy who blames large cups for obesity.

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
  7. Blacklist IMEI? by pauljlucas · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why can't they just blacklist the phone's IMEI?

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    1. Re:Blacklist IMEI? by MavEtJu · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They said that in the article: It gets sold to a carrier which is not querying the US version of the Stolen Phone database.

      We need something like DNS but then for IMEI numbers. .imei :-)

      --
      bash$ :(){ :|:&};:
  8. Not free by DaveSlash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    After a $150 deductible

    --
    Burn FAT not OIL
  9. Why not block by IMEI -what the rest of world do. by johnjones · · Score: 4, Informative

    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."

  10. Sounds like a comic book super hero job by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  11. Re:No Kill by mark-t · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What we need is central industry DB that a stolen phone is registered to. Once registered to this DB no carrier in US would allow on their network.

    Apple, Google, Blackbery would ban these devices from their servers also.

    You could have stopped right there. That alone would have negated a lot of the incentive of stealing phones in the first place.

    If anyone buys a phone without checking and later it is found to have been slolden then they get to share in the charges from the person who committed crime. If he killed or maimed they get charges as accessories.

    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'
  12. You aren't looking at systemic effects. by xmark · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  13. 2 things by Osgeld · · Score: 3, Funny

    I own a microsoft powered phone, no one wants it

    What happens when "hackers" get hold of this kill switch?