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Not Even Thieves Want Your BlackBerry
- Thread starter HardOCP News
- Start date
Sounds like the thief is either a professional or is at least not so high on meth or crack that they don't listen to their fence.
Regardless of the resale value of legitimate Blackberries they make terrible stolen goods. Even if they are not remotely deactivated they're still way too easy to trace and identify as soon as they are bought by someone and connected to a cellular network. You might as well just spray paint 'stolen goods' on the front and leave a 'if lost please return to' sticker on the back. It's not good (illegal) business to be selling hot goods that can be easily traced back to their original owners.
Android and dumb phones? Toss the sim card and it can be sold as used for more meth immediately or the fence sells them in bulk to gangs (usually overseas) who unlock them and then resell them as new or refurbished.
iPhone might be a bit interesting. The iProducts that use iTunes all have a unique identifier that is reported to Apple everytime they are sync'd. Apple has a customer program that allows you to report your stolen iProduct so they list that ID as stolen in their database. Off course this won't deter thieves much - Apple is more then happy to sell more tunes and apps to stolen iProducts, they just refuse to do warranty repairs on them.
Regardless of the resale value of legitimate Blackberries they make terrible stolen goods. Even if they are not remotely deactivated they're still way too easy to trace and identify as soon as they are bought by someone and connected to a cellular network. You might as well just spray paint 'stolen goods' on the front and leave a 'if lost please return to' sticker on the back. It's not good (illegal) business to be selling hot goods that can be easily traced back to their original owners.
Android and dumb phones? Toss the sim card and it can be sold as used for more meth immediately or the fence sells them in bulk to gangs (usually overseas) who unlock them and then resell them as new or refurbished.
iPhone might be a bit interesting. The iProducts that use iTunes all have a unique identifier that is reported to Apple everytime they are sync'd. Apple has a customer program that allows you to report your stolen iProduct so they list that ID as stolen in their database. Off course this won't deter thieves much - Apple is more then happy to sell more tunes and apps to stolen iProducts, they just refuse to do warranty repairs on them.
The more incredible part of this story is that 2 out of 2 people had a BB!
Get on a bus in Toronto, almost every student with a phone is carrying a Blackberry. I don't have one but it seems the BB quick messaging service (this 'BBMing') is the new in thing for teenagers in a lot of areas. Doesn't seem to be helping RIMs bottom line though.
Interesting. Seems like RIM needs more Toronto teens.