To Catch a Phone Thief, Take a 'Theftie' | Hacker News Reader

To Catch a Phone Thief, Take a 'Theftie'

online.wsj.com

If I'd steal a phone, first thing I'd do is take the battery out. Right after the job. Second, do a full wipe using Odin or similar tools. Third, reflash the firmware.

As long as the device I stole is not an iPhone, the phone is now completely under my control. And for what its worth, to avoid tracking it is iirc possible to put in fake IMEI, BT MAC and WiFi MAC addresses. No one compares these anyway, and e.g. a swap of the 3rd and 4th char would escape many people.

The crossover of people who know to do all that and people who steal phones is very, very small. People who tend to get in to petty thievery are not the type of people who have the technical skills or even the forethought to take those precautions.

If you're doing this on "professional" level, likely the guy picking up your loot will have told you at least about 1), alone to reduce the risk of cops tracking down the merchandise. If you proved to be not at least totally bananas, he might also tell you a bit more - the less time the stuff is in his hands, but in yours, the better for him.

This reads like a submarine PR piece for Lookout. These products/services aren't new at all, and there are many, many other providers than the ones mentioned in the 'article.'

Yep. Leverage the new "selfie" trend to get a news story placed about your product = classic PR maneuver.

Yeah, this is old 'news'.

You can do this yourself if you already have Tasker installed on your Android phone

I take a snapshot from the forward camera every time my screen is activated and save it to a local directory. But you could easily email the photos somewhere along with GPS coordinates.

Oh the power of PR and/or money to pay media entities like WSJ. Other apps like Cerberus have had this functionality for years.

No need to allege some kind of payoff conspiracy. I got the same pitch. Editors just decide whether it's interesting enough or new enough to warrant a post or not. Some readerships are far less likely to have heard or other mobile security options, so a high-profile one adding this makes it news - like when Facebook adds 2-factor auth years after Twitter does it.

if you install one of this (i use cerberus for android) you'll get a bunch of pictures of yourself when you fail to unlock your phone.

makes for a good tumblr: http://invalidpin.tumblr.com

It's worth noting that Cerberus, with a one-time price of 3€ (about $4) is considerably cheaper than some of the options mentioned in the article (~$30/year).

So once I have this photo of the thief, what next?

From reports I've read online, even when you go to police with a location of your device, they won't do much.

There was a case a block or two away from me where the person made the phone ring while the cop was there, which made it reasonable for the cops to enter and conduct a limited search. It was a sort of a clearing house for fenced electronics, if I remember correctly. So it depends a lot on the circumstances. If the phone had been off, I bet it would have turned out differently - though if you had a pic of the guy and the GPS said it was there an hour ago... maybe.

Show up with a friend or two.

I've now done this three times (once for me, twice for other friends), with good results each :)

Cops won't do anything? Well, I sure as hell will!

Edit: Obviously keep in mind your safety, not all situations are created equal. Most will simply hand you the phone the second they understand what is happening and that you are not going to leave.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Note to self: when stealing phones, cover camera lens with thumb

Even easier, power them off ASAP. Don't turn it back on until you've removed the SIM and taken it out of any Wifi range. These anti-theft services all rely on having connectivity.

It presumably isn't impossible to design phones with hardware designed to transmit their identity as soon as connectivity is restored even after the SIM and firmware is replaced, the credible threat of which would be enough to eliminate black markets in that type of mobile phone.

The cynic in me suspects that carriers and OEMs long ago estimated the marketing benefit from an "unstealable" phone to be rather less than the revenue from more marketable overpriced phone insurance and increased replacement rates.

Exactly why phones NEED to require the passcode/touch ID/whatever when turning the device off. Could add the same to Sim removals: "SIM HAS BEEN REMOVED, ENTER PASSCODE TO DISABLE ALARM"

Or just build cerberus into your ROM and use the authorised SIM feature.

It will take a pic and send me an email of its location if another SIM is put in.

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