I remember 11 years ago, when the Government ordered the creation of two new databases to record the Imei (‘unique identity’ of all mobile phones) of all Colombians cell phone and these platforms would be pioneers. End phone theft once and for all.”
We Colombians had to go through the arduous process of entering a website to register the Imei number for months. and thus we show that our phone has not been stolen. Under penalty of denial.
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The head of Comcel at the time gave me an interview, when I asked about the effectiveness of the measure, in which he was categorically: “It will not help at all,” he said.
A technically strong and very definite premonition cost him bitter clashes with the then-incumbent President and minister, and 11 years later it was just as clear-cut as it was then: it wouldn’t work.
Today, 1,100,000 phones are still stolen a year, and both of these thefts involve violence: one person is injured or killed at the hands of criminal gangs that are technically and logistically perfectly structured to feed their lucrative business with blood. .
Because Cell phone theft has never been a problem of a technological or digital nature, as the Comcel executive warned in 2012.
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There was no reason to have a negative database with the Imei of stolen devices: Less than 20 percent of people who were victims of their phone being stolen reported their device’s Imei.
There is also no positive database that feed operators and manufacturers go to, whether authorized or legal Imei.
On the contrary, As a result of “matching” these numbers, legitimate users are blocked in Colombia. involved in a hassle to remove the legal phone number’s identification number from said platform.
And these private money systems cost more than 100,000 million pesos, and even though the law says you have to pay with prison to change an Imei in Colombia, they did nothing to quell the bandits who didn’t. This is how you get to know the first prisoner.
There are also no operations at major collection centers for stolen mobile phones in major capital cities, where there are buildings and warehouses full of stolen mobile phones and their parts.
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Source: Exame
