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Aug 11, 2011

Phones Stolen In the UK Riots Will Be Blocked From Networks

Just in case you were thinking of buying one of those 40 iPhone 4s that were most likely looted in the UK riots and put on Craigslist, don't—UK networks are blocking all stolen phones, so they'll be worthless.

Macworld spoke to several UK networks about the issue of the stolen phones, with the general answer being that they'll simply check stock records for each ransacked store, and add the IMEI number associated with each phone to the Equipment Identity Register which will block them from working with SIM cards in under a day. Within two days the phones will also be banned from being used on any UK network.

Sellers of stolen phones will likely still try and shift them onto unsuspecting buyers, meaning anyone who's been thinking about buying a brand new iPhone, BlackBerry or other recent model should probably go by official means only for a while, unless they want to end up with a very expensive door-stopper.
 
 

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw it on Tv, it was incredible!

Anonymous said...

Been watchin lots of vidoes of these

Kamatacci said...

Too bad they can't rig them to blow up. There might be an app for that.

Benjamin Linus said...

Anyone who thinks that they could get away with this was a moron.

Milky said...

Lmao @Kamatacci. If only!

Electric Addict said...

LOL owned

Anonymous said...

they can also probably send a signal down the line that will 'brick' them so they dont even boot up.