[samirkatti]

Phone thefts have increased and this specific line brought a smile on my face :

"For stolen phones to have no resale value on the black market, the vast majority of consumers must have the theft-deterrent feature pre-enabled on their phones,"

Blackberry has made the economic value of a stolen phone 0 by disabling the lost or stolen phones. In other words, no thief would steal a BBRY with intention of selling in black market because there is no value . Oddly from the comments, not many seem aware of this !

Phone thefts soar as kill-switch debate heats up

[jaydee5799]

There is ignorance all over.
Thanks for the article.

[pbfan]

What does Blackberry do to make the economic value of a stolen phone 0? How does that work?

Phone thefts have increased and this specific line brought a smile on my face :

Blackberry has made the economic value of a stolen phone 0 by disabling the lost or stolen phones. In other words, no thief would steal a BBRY with intention of selling in black market because there is no value . Oddly from the comments, not many seem aware of this !

Phone thefts soar as kill-switch debate heats up

[Paisley Pirate]

Gee.... maybe if eBay would NOT allow bad IEMI phone sales, the theft problem would thin out immensely... just a naive thought... but then eBay wouldn't be making those additional profits from sales of stolen merchandise...

[JonCBK]

Gee.... maybe if eBay would NOT allow bad IEMI phone sales, the theft problem would thin out immensely... just a naive thought... but then eBay wouldn't be making those additional profits from sales of stolen merchandise...

I think a lot of phones go overseas. The average snatch and run guy isn't selling his loot through ebay every week. He hands it off to a fence. The fence sends the phone overseas.

Posted via CB10

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

What's sad is this doesn't stop people from finding someone foolish enough to buy a stolen BlackBerry device. Still see threads where someone buys a new device and it is blocked because of it being reported stolen. (or maybe they stole a BlackBerry and expect CrackBerry to know how to unblock it...) Either way if you left an iPhone and a BlackBerry sitting on a table, a thief will take both. He may throw the BlackBerry away, but he'll still take it just because he can.

[greggebhardt]

There is ignorance all over.
Thanks for the article.

Or it could be because there are way less Blackberry devices in use in the USA. <1%?
That could also be part of this.

[richardat]

[QUggebhardt;10267968]Or it could be because there are way less Blackberry devices in use in the USA. <1%?
That could also be part of this.[/QUOTE]


I suspect there are still a bit more than 1% users in the us.....I'd take a guess at 3-5% but dropping rapidly. Of course that includes legacy... Which probably is essentially worthless on the black market in north America. Bb10 would almost certainly be less than 1%.

[greggebhardt]

Sorry but I can not see the average thief who is about to steal a phone say Oh gosh that is a Blackberry phone, I better not steal that as it has security that makes it useless!

Few people would also let this "feature" influence them to the point to buy a Blackberry.