On Fri, 04 Apr 2008 07:35:17 +0200, Michele Renda
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
When I steal the phone, the first thing that I will do is to turn off
the phone. Then because I am afraid to be detected by cell I will change
the internal sim, before to turn on it.
This is also what happens in Russia. The majority of cell phones are
stolen or robbed of people by junkies. They immediately turn the phone off
and throw away the SIM card. Without turning the phone on, they bring
several phones they've collected during the night to a buyer-up who pays
them maybe a tenth of what the phone is worth, and that's enough for them
to get their needle.
The bulk of stolen phones then goes to some phone repair workshops who run
an underground business of preparing them to be sold. They reflash the
phone or reset it to a clean state because nobody wants to sell a phone
with someone's data on it that would be crying out loud “I'm a stolen
phone”. They also unlock it if it's locked to an operator, and change the
IMEI in those models where it's possible. The next stop for a stolen phone
is a second hand mobile phone shop whose owner allegedly has no idea that
the phones that strange people bring, a whole box of them at a time, are
in fact stolen.
Because rampant mobile phone theft brings them to the second hand market
where they are priced for less than half of what they're worth, it makes
them affordable to people who would otherwise not be able to buy a phone.
Of course, this happens at the expense of those people from whom the
phones are stolen, and who usually buy themselves a new one. Because of
this situation, the cell operators in Russia are reluctant to use the IMEI
(which is often impossible to change) to track down or at least deny
service to phones reported as stolen -- that would shrink their own market.
--
Alexey Feldgendler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[ICQ: 115226275] http://feldgendler.livejournal.com
_______________________________________________
Openmoko community mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
