UK mobiles not worth stealing
Home Office parrots MICAF good news
Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery
Mobile phones stolen in the UK are locked from their own network within 48 hours, and 98 per cent of them are locked from all (UK) networks within 48 hours. Despite that 800,000 were stolen last year, according to government figures.
The locking figures come from tests run by MICAF (Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum) during September, and exceed industry targets of 80 per cent by this time, though we don't know how expansive the testing was.
The problem now, according to MICAF, is to let potential thieves know that stealing a mobile is pointless - to which end the government shelled out half a million quid in June on its "RU Getting the Msg" campaign to let people know. It wasn't aimed at the El Reg demographic, which explains why you didn't notice.
Stolen phones are blocked using their IMEI: the unique identifier of every handset. Changing the IMEI of a handset, or offering to change it, or even offering an introduction to someone who might offer to change it, all became offences in April, though more effective in stopping such reprogramming has been the pressure put on manufacturers to make the process more difficult.
Not every GMS network worldwide is signed up to blocking stolen IMEIs, though an increasing proportion are. Some phones will continue to be shipped abroad, and some will just be used for the few hours after they're stolen if they're used at all, but blocking stolen handsets quickly can only help reduce the theft - as long as the thieves know it's going to happen. ®
Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery
COMMENTS
Re: Insurance jobbies
So you admit you may have inadvertently, unknowingly committed insurance fraud? That's like the other day when I accidentally and through no fault of my own pirated a whole bunch of music then absent-mindedly and without intent smoked a joint while I listened to it. :)
Insurance jobbies.
You need a crime reference number to claim on most of the mobile phone insurance policies as they do not cover accidental damage. So when you drop your phone in a jack daniels and coke on a drunken night out you instantly put the sim card in a friends phone to get any numbers you have not saved or cannot get again and the next morning your down the local police station explaining you need a crime reference number as your mobile phone was stolen from the table you was sitting at last night. Then you phone your mobile company and give them the crime reference number, which they never actually check and there you go.
Of course this is all completely hypothetical and I have never knowingly committed insurance fraud.
Worried abut having your mobile nicked?
Just buy a crap one, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/11/mobile_mugger_cheap/
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Data control in the cloud
