Cellphone, Keys, Wallet? Check!
by Josiah McGurty
Have you ever lost your cell phone? Have you ever had your phone stolen?
It's not a nice feeling when you get up from your seat at your favorite spot downtown, do your routine pat down of your pockets to make sure all of the contents are there and ready for the next part of your adventure, only to discover that one of your pockets is completely empty.
It was my right pocket, the one in which I always keep my cell phone - and only my cell phone. No sleeves, no cases, just my cell phone. The panic slowly started to rise as I looked around the nearby countertops and retraced my last few hours of activity.
Good thing I had set up a pattern lock. That will provide a decent layer of security to prevent access to the Android 2.3 Gingerbread custom ROM I was running (thank you, Cyanogen!).
The SD card, stored in the back compartment near the SIM, would be completely exposed, all of its contents available to the thief. Personal things like photos and archived messages, contacts, nuclear missile launch codes were now all available.
Too bad I hadn't set up a PIN lock on the prepaid SIM I had in there. That means they would be able to take out the SIM and use it in another device, which is what ended up happening.
I left it alone for the night, and went home feeling like a baby without my best pacifier. Fortunately, I still had my old cell phone as a standby. I spent a good part of the following day searching my apartment for my lost device, even though I clearly remembered asking an acquaintance to enter his number into the phone and leaving downtown without it.
I couldn't accept the fact that, yes, I had either lost my phone or had it stolen from me. What can a person do in a situation like this? Well, fortunately, you have your cell phone provider to back you up, right?
I'd just call T-Mobile - they would be able to help me out.
The nice gal answered and got me over to prepaid, since that was the service I was using. Fair enough.
The person at the other end of the phone was not a native English speaker and sounded very scripted, which are all things I have come to expect at this point. He was able to verify that, yes, "Your phone was stolen as there has been significant SMS activity since it was last in your possession. O.K., let's go ahead and suspend that as lost or stolen."
That way they couldn't keep using my money to send and receive short messages with the rest of the 39 thieves from the den where my T-Mobile G2 was now hiding.
Now, I'm not claiming to know the ins-and-outs of how cell phone technology works, but I will tell you that I come from a computer networking background and I do have a fairly decent idea of the similarities.
Cell phones are basically pocket computers running on a wireless network. Since there are so many thousands of different "pocket computers" running on this wireless network, each device gets its own International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI).
The cell phone manufacturers program this IMEI into the hardware of the device, and with most modern devices, such as my HTC Desire Z (T-Mobile G2, same thing), there is no way to change this hard-coded unique identifier.
Think of the IMEI as the phone's fingerprint. It's a unique way to identify the device from the rest of the devices on the network. It's like your home address or email address.
If every house in the world didn't have a different address, if each person didn't have a unique email address, then how would you be able to send someone a piece of mail? When you call or send an SMS to another cell phone, it's like sending mail. It has to go to the right address.
Now, let's suppose that T-Mobile noticed an absurd amount of text messages being sent from a device. So they investigate. They take a look and discover spam messages.
What would T-Mobile be able to do? The first logical thing they would want to do is stop the bad guy. With a few clicks, they could instantly block not only the SIM card that was being used to send the messages, but also the IMEI (the unique fingerprint of the phone).
That way, the bad guy would have to get both a new SIM and a new device in order to use any services on the network. T-Mobile has the capability to do this.
From a consumer/customer perspective, what would you want T-Mobile to do if you had lost your shiny new toy?
- A. Nothing.
- B. Block the SIM card.
- C. Block the IMEI.
- D. Both B and C.
Well, yeah.... I lost my phone and my SIM card. So, yeah, I wanted them to block my phone and my SIM card.
The first time I asked T-Mobile if this would be possible, the scripted talker in prepaid belittled my request and said they only have that in postpaid, as if I had done something wrong by choosing prepaid.
The next gal I talked to was named Samantha. She was very polite and sounded genuinely concerned regarding my situation. She let me know that they do have the ability to do this, but it has to be Special Account Care who handles these requests. As it was Saturday when I was making the request, I would have to wait until Monday when SAC is available.
Come Monday morning, a new glimmer of hope arose with the sun.
I may be getting back at whoever stole my phone, or at least whoever is stupid enough to try and use my stolen phone. Here is what I discovered and wish to share with you all today. The girl I spoke with at Special Account Care informed me, only after clarifying my understanding of how these things work, that she does have the ability to block an IMEI, but only if the customer is on what's called an Equipment Installment Plan, and they're late on a payment.
So basically, they can block the phone's fingerprint to prevent it from being used on their network, but they only choose to do so if the customer owes them money. They have the ability but they choose not to block stolen phones.
Why would they choose not to block a stolen phone?
Look at it from the perspective of the owners of the corporation. If a lowly customer such as myself has a phone stolen, not only is there a chance that whoever ends up with the device will call T-Mobile and activate service, but also the victim will usually buy a new phone.
In a common theft situation, T-Mobile may be able to get two separate two year contracts without having to do any work. That's four years of committed money! Multiply my situation by however many phones are stolen each year and you have yourself a huge income opportunity by not doing the right thing.
On one hand, they will not plug this leak because it is a humongous, raging golden shower of a money maker. On the other hand, they are encouraging cell phone theft.
This is not how we are supposed to be using technology. It is a wonderful gift that should be used to help people, not take advantage of them.
If you want to learn a little bit more about GSM technology I recommend reading this:
www.gsmworld.com/our-work/programmes-and-initiatives/fraud-and-security/imei_database.htm