aj's phone talk

8:19 PM

@AJHenderson Can't they just flash a fresh OS. I used to do it all the time with my galaxy s. You don't even need to turn the phone on. Just need to put it in download mode. Then just sell it on craig's list.

AJ Henderson

@fredsbend the IEMI is the actual radio identifier

it's a bit harder to flash

there are ways to do it, but you need a clean one to clone

fredsbend

You're over my head now.

idk what IEMI is.

AJ Henderson

IMEI rather

International Mobile Station Equipment Identity

The International Mobile Station Equipment Identity or IMEI /aɪˈmiː/ is a number, usually unique, to identify 3GPP (i.e., GSM, UMTS and LTE) and iDEN mobile phones, as well as some satellite phones. It is usually found printed inside the battery compartment of the phone, but can also be displayed on-screen on most phones by entering *#06# on the dialpad, or alongside other system information in the settings menu on smartphone operating systems. The IMEI number is used by a GSM network to identify valid devices and therefore can be used for stopping a stolen phone from accessing that network. For...

basically, it is the number that lets cell towers identify your phone as the one the number belongs to

it's the cellphone equivilant of a MAC address

but is harder to spoof

particularly since the full list of valid IMEI's is known

and you get issues if you clone to one that is in use

but you can pull things like buying a cheap cellphone, discarding it and cloning the IMEI on to a fancy phone

cause to the network, they are all just radios

fredsbend

Oh, yeah, it's just the radio. I know what that it, but never had a need to fiddle with it.

If you are a thief you probably don't care if you are selling a stolen, and broken phone, too. You just need to make sure it looks like it works.

Or send it in to a recycler. They don't care and they will give you money.

AJ Henderson

I don't know how craigs list works, is there no payment middleman?

fredsbend

8:28 PM

You can't sell on craig's. You will have to meet them face-to-face.

AJ Henderson

ah

fredsbend

That poses problems for being items, like a car, but I doubt cops investigate petty phone theft.

AJ Henderson

well, this one they might since he is on video and was doing it on the property of one of the cities largest employers

fredsbend

Make a generic report that instantly becomes just a statistic. But that's about it.

AJ Henderson

and they were contacted by the security of said employer

fredsbend

8:30 PM

@AJHenderson If they have some time on their hand, they might compare it to other petty theft videos to see if they look like the same person.

Being that is is a business that is filing the complaint, they might to more though. That's the way of the world, isn't it?

AJ Henderson

@fredsbend the way it used to work in Albany (where this occured) is that if it happened in a residential area, it was basically scott free, but if you impacted a large business, they came down hard

to the point where one side of a bridge you could have a small store robbed at gun point in the middle of the day, 3 times in a week

and the other side of said bridge, you could let your child wander the street at 3am without fear

fredsbend

Yeah. Money makes the world go round.

AJ Henderson

because that bridge separated residential from commercial districts

it does make sense sadly though, from a practical stand point, if someone is bringing money in to your city, you have to keep them happy

not that it's fair, but when you have limited resources, getting your resources further limited by losing big businesses isn't helpful

fredsbend

@AJHenderson I heard about a guy that got the galaxy s to work on virgin mobile, using a method similar to this I think.

AJ Henderson

and said big businesses also have the resources to leave

@fredsbend that is carrier unlocks, which is easier than an IMEA clone

fredsbend

8:34 PM

I don't think it's a bad thing per se, either. Business makes the world go round, is more apt than saying money.

AJ Henderson

there are also games you can play to make it more of a priority for the cops, but honestly, it cost me nothing

so I'm not really worried

the data integrity is the big issue

and that's compromised regardless of if they recover the phone

the hardware is meaningless to me. I have a spare

the real value in a stolen phone isn't the phone

it is the accounts and data

give me someone's phone in an unlocked state and I will get you in to their bank accounts within a few days at most, if not hours

and I could have completely new lines of credit opened in their name in a similar amount of time if they don't work quick

fredsbend

@AJHenderson paypal and other banks use mobile password resets, which are not as secure as people would like to think they are.

To be a successful thief these days you need to be a tech nerd.

AJ Henderson

it isn't even that so much as the e-mail access that is devistating

or things like cached amazon credentials allowing you to literally buy anything you want from the owner of the phone's account

you have to figure out a way to intercept the packages though

so that you don't give away your address

fredsbend

That's what I'm saying about the mobile resets. I don't even need a user name, email or anything. Just hit up the sites trying to reset the password with only the mobile phone number.

AJ Henderson

there is a reason I don't have those on on any of my accounts :)

technically I should redo my 2-factor keys for a couple of games that are now in the wind, but I'm not too worried about the attacker being interested in compromising game accounts

fredsbend

8:42 PM

@AJHenderson Yeah, that's kid's stuff. Real thieves want the money. Most game accounts can't get you that. You can buy game related stuff though with a stored cc.

AJ Henderson

there's more money in it than you'd think

but still not enough for someone to do one-offs

game accounts can have a re-sale value moving up in to the range of thousands of dollars

the contents of one of Danielle's games is probably in that range if they could effectively move it before they were detected and shut down

but it is another thing that to us is of minimal value as it is just digital data that can be restored

it would be mildly frustrating

fredsbend

Most people are actually concerned about the loss of irreplaceable data. Pics, videos, etc. Those are the ninnies that don't auto backup every evening, though.

AJ Henderson

@fredsbend yeah, I autodump photos to cloud storage and now Danielle is far more interested in that feature than when I first set it up for her :)

programs all are cloud stored as well, so they just show up when you attach a new phone to the google account

she'll lose some gameplay progress on a few games that used local or IMEA bound accounts

but big deal

if you take a photo or video on any of our phones or tablets, it is on my server immediately after

calendar and contacts are similarly sync'd

fredsbend

8:58 PM

@AJHenderson I used Titanium Backup and Dropbox. Videos and pics started upload within minutes of taking them, assuming internet connectivity. Apps were backed up and uploaded every Monday night, though I could have set this to every night, but saw no need for me.

Contacts were synced to my gmail, so no worries there.

Verizon also backed them up. Which caused a double entry problem at times when syncing.

AJ Henderson

even my mailboxes are primarily IMAP, so sent messages and even drafts are immediately backed up

yeah, I have titanium backup but never got a profile setup to do full dumps regularly, mostly because it would just be too much data

my backup images when I do full backups are measured in 10s of GBs

my phone has over 100GB of data

at this point

err sorry, just under

I forgot I have a 32 gb device with a 64 gb card

not a 64 gb device

fredsbend

If you do business on your phone, I could see why you want that. I never did. Only personal email, which means mostly spam. But I sent my servers to always keep messages if they were still in my inbox on my phone and for a month after if I delete them. With this, i never saw the advantage with imap.

@AJHenderson Oh, you'd backup the whole rom?

I always felt like that was overkill to set that to a recurring auto backup.

AJ Henderson

← 83 messages moved from The Upper Room

← 1 message moved from The Upper Room

figured it would make sense to move this

since we kind of took over the chat :)

fredsbend

Yeah. its cool.

what is your phone model?

AJ Henderson

yeah, I normally do full rom backups when I do them

I have a Galaxy S4

danielle has a Galaxy Nexus

I'm running a final ROM backup at home on my old Nexus now so I can transfer her over

though I'm debating moving to an S5 again

and giving her the S4

fredsbend

9:06 PM

@AJHenderson had

@AJHenderson You downgraded from the s5 to the s4? why?

AJ Henderson

well, she can use my old one

I always had the S4

oh

that was not that I had an S5

that was that I had considered one before

I previously decided against upgrading at the time

fredsbend

I see.

AJ Henderson

I run rooted and preferably boot loader unlocked

fredsbend

I downgraded from the s1 to the intensity 3. Sad day.

I rooted and all that jazz too. It's the only way to android.

I decided that I didn't use it enough to justify the added data expense. Also, it was causing arguments with my wife.

AJ Henderson

it appears that they don't currently have boot loader unlock for Verizon's S5 still, which decreases my desire to upgrade. If I was going to, I'd probably go for a developer device

fredsbend

9:10 PM

I think what I miss most is the ease of texting. Swipe was the best. Now I can't seem to type three words without a letter missing.

AJ Henderson

I actually prefer physical keyboards stil

we're both grandfathered on unlimited data too

I'm not sure if I'd keep it if they ever pull the grandfathering

because at the end of the day, 95% of the time, it would actually be "cheaper", but if I was thinking about the cost, then I wouldn't end up using it for half the stuff I use it for

the stress of having to pay for bandwidth defeats the purpose of having it

fredsbend

@AJHenderson I was as well, but it just wasn't worth it anymore. I was averaging about 500mb per month, except when I was out of town, averaging about 3gb. That netflix adds up quick.

AJ Henderson

we average about 4gb a month

sometimes up to 6 and as much as 10 or 12 if we're out of town

fredsbend

@AJHenderson This.

AJ Henderson

I'd also feel better if it automatically increased without having to set a cap and being charged double if you exceed it

fredsbend

9:14 PM

@AJHenderson Time Warner was having issues years ago for about 10 days, so I threw up my hotspot every night. That added up to like 15 gb. And that wasn't even a whole month.

AJ Henderson

and honestly the rates are still rediculous

It should not cost $5 per gigabyte

that's goofy

fredsbend

@AJHenderson I'd rather pay for what I use. x price per MB. None of this $10 per gb crap. You go over by a single bit and they want $10 more.

AJ Henderson

yeah, I wouldn't mind that if it was a reasonable rate

but by reasonable rate, I mean that 50gb should be like $50

if that

it's still 5 to 10 times what I would call "reasonable"

fredsbend

@AJHenderson That's still high. Amazon can manage 15 cents per gig on traditional infrastructure. You really think the cell network requires more than 60 times that?

AJ Henderson

um, 6 times, if it was $1 per GB

or was that 1.5 cents?

fredsbend

9:16 PM

Of course, not.

I was talking about $10/gb

the going rate.

AJ Henderson

ah, yeah

fredsbend

I could do a buck per gb. That's reasonable.

AJ Henderson

I mean, even if you break it down to utilization, if a device can transfer at 70mbps down, a Gb transfers in around 15 seconds

fredsbend

But then I'd pay $10 for 500 text messages. Something that has about 1/10 of a penny in costs to them.

AJ Henderson

so they are effectively talking about data being $40 a minute

of radio time

(not even 1/10 a penny)

fredsbend

9:18 PM

Exactly why it's such a hustle. Phone, which is data at 128kbps, is basically given away these days.

@AJHenderson Yeah. I came across a page that pushes the numbers and came up with a similar thing for text, saying it would be like paying over $1000 per minute of talk.

AJ Henderson

thing is, they like having people using 4gb so that they can keep getting their $30 a month average per user without having to actually pay for any bandwidth

fredsbend

Lately, I've seen the Go phone and Straight Talk in Walmart. I might look into them being any good and reasonable priced.

@AJHenderson When price is inflated the only person to really blame is always the consumer. Most consumers aren't even sure what a GB actually is.

AJ Henderson

yeah

and that was the brilliance of it

they kept costs the same for the people that weren't using the service

and made not using it the new norm

fredsbend

I've got to go now, but you should check out this pretty awesome video. Right in my own backyard.

►

see you around. nice chat.

AJ Henderson

the other fun one

visual.ly/ink-costs-more-human-blood

make a service that prints all your SMS messages and you'll have a veritable gold mine

Transcript for