Cell Carriers Finally Agree to Anti-Theft Phone 'Kill Switch' → It's about time. They also need to go after the resellers who buy stolen...

Phones. You see them all over, those phone stores who will buy "used" phones no questions asked and then flash them to restore service and the like.

Regulate them like pawn shops.

The kill switch will take care of the resellers. No need for more regulation.

unfortunately a kill switch isn't regulation.. and I don't think any carrier should have the right to control my hardware.

lots of stores actually have display cases full of phones marked 'export only' those are the blacklisted(reported stolen) phones. customers also come in specifically requesting 'blacklisted' phones since the price is cheaper and they are just as usable overseas. apple and other really should put the same 'activation lock' on when phones are on the blacklist as they do when 'find my iphone' is set up.

I doubt it. I think they will just re-flash the phones.

Good luck with that... I see this all the time in other countries that have the "kill switch" service.

They take the stolen phone and clone a broken phones imei number too it then sell it off as a used phone. Even the OTP area IMEI number can be hacked... They just flip the bits to raise the IMEI number since the OTP area can only be raised, never lowered. But go head and believe this will help.

and both are easy to bypass. Locked iphones can be gotten around and restored easily. you just lose the data.