Mobile is a threat to the head

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

All summer my father's employee lay in a coma after a serious head injury. This comrade with a legacy briefcase attracted the attention of three "teenagers" when he took a mobile phone out of his pocket. A few seconds were enough for him to have neither an old mobile phone with an equally ancient briefcase, nor health for several long months.

And the other day, a neighbor came running to check access to her husband's cell phone. It has been disabled. Then it turns out that they have spioneered a cell phone from their spouse at work, and their colleagues. Nothing surprising.

Mobiles steal at every step, or rather every minute in the world there is a cell phone theft. And if Great Britain has the saddest statistics on a global scale (every 45 seconds), then in Russia St. Petersburg is such a lively place. In my memory, a conversation with a friend who peacefully walked from the metro to the house and shared the news, after a couple of minutes I heard a strange clang, and then he called from the injuries of the point, they say, don’t worry - nothing happened - I’ll buy a new phone - I’ll call. Most often, stolen phones are sold for 300 rubles, there are buyers - the business is booming.

Few of the thieves decide to take extreme measures: usually the young ladies give the cellphones themselves, so that no one touches them with their hands, but the men are fastidious - they can manage to respond in the same way (move is not weak). Only those who are impatient or do not have enough brains like to get their hands dirty. Recently I read about a new way to cheat sympathetic Russian citizens. In the hospital, where everyone is equal in their position, a decent-looking comrade approaches the visitors and, demonstrating the dead batteries of his mobile phone, asks to let their mother, who is lying in the next ward, talk to him. Since such a method has hit the pages of the press, it means that there are kind souls who then look for their telephone numbers in the wards.

What to do if one of the ways to steal a mobile phone falls like snow on your head?

If the phone disappears in a crowded place (store, cafe), you can try to call your own number. Firstly, if it is simply lost, it can help determine its location by the sound of the melody. Well, if the cell phone is stolen, it is possible that the thief has not gone far yet, and again the phone's melody will give him away. The method is ineffective when the phone is off.

You can block the SIM card of a stolen phone. The money on the account will remain intact, but you will not return the device. For example, when changing the SIM-card, the phones are blocked for some Nokia models. But this is not a serious approach - there is nothing that cannot be unlocked by crazy hands of any nationality.

You can report it to the police. How serious it is - decide for yourself. Everything that can be done in this situation stops only on such methods.

Of course, the easiest way is to go out and buy a new phone. Only it won't get any easier. It is a shame and it is not clear why, with such progress in scientific and technical terms, no measures have been invented to prevent the theft of vital means of communication.

They say it is necessary to hammer state structures to oblige cellular operators to install equipment for programming the "international identifier of the owner of a mobile phone" (IMSI is a 15-digit serial number entered in each phone), developed by the Munich firm Rohde & Schwarz.

The device is designed to determine the subscriber's code, which is stored in the SIM card. But along the way, it calculates the subscriber's IMEI. Taking advantage of the security gaps in the GSM standard, the device can collect data on all devices within a certain radius. The only and significant disadvantage is that the device entails a violation of the confidentiality of conversations. Therefore, it is not officially used.

Recently, a new development has appeared on the market: the Kobra alarm emits a piercing "scream" of 120-140 decibels when the phone is ripped out of its owner's hands.

It runs on batteries and consists of two parts, one of which attaches to the case, and the other directly to the phone itself. If the device is pulled out of the hands or pulled out of the case, the alarm is triggered on the principle of pulling the pin out of the grenade.

French mobile operators prevent theft by exchanging information that will prevent the stolen handset from being connected to another operator's network. A national register of serial numbers of all mobile subscribers has been created. But the phone can be taken to a neighboring state. So the problem is not so easy to solve.

In Australia, the largest telephone company disconnects calls from stolen phones. For this, an expensive call blocking system was purchased. The idea was supported by all major operators of the Green Continent, so by the summer it will be almost impossible to use someone else's mobile phone.

A very original method of combating the theft of mobile phones was proposed by the Dutch police. The thieves will now not be allowed to live in peace SMS-messages, which will come to the device every 3 minutes. The message text is something like this:. The "bombing" begins immediately after the victim's statement. Even replacing the SIM-card will not help criminals - SMS will be sent to the new number as well. The fact is that a special program tracks the unique identification number of the handset - IMEI, and starts sending. Again, it's worth recalling that the IMEI can be changed.

I turned with a question to the leading Russian operators MTS and Beeline: "What measures are being taken to help the party affected by the theft?" The answer came only from the public relations service of OJSC VimpelCom (Beeline): “In our country, it is difficult to do anything about mobile phones, except for regular measures, since there is no appropriate legislative framework. we help in finding the missing phone. The search is based on the presence of a unique number (IMEI) for each handset. But the problem is that this number can be reprogrammed (the situation is about the same as with car theft)."