From Friday 26 September, all mobile operators will be required to permanently block mobiles declared as stolen as long as the owner has told his company the unique number IMEI device.
The measure was imposed by the National Telecommunications and Post Commission in order to prevent thefts and sell them on the black market.
The process: IMEI, declaration thefts, request to the network
Necessary condition to enter one mobile in the "black list" is the notification of the IMEI code of the device by the subscriber to his provider. The unique code IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) contains information about the manufacturer and model of the device.
Since the mobile is blacklisted with the prohibited IMEI numbers, its use is theoretically impossible even with the use of a SIM card by another mobile operator
Every subscriber can find the code IMEI:
- In the package of the device
- Pressing * # 06 # on the device
- With the specific application of the device
To block the device, subscribers must initiallyto report theft to the police and then va written request for the device to be switched off, attaching tthe proof of the theft statement.
Each company that deactivates the stolen devices of its subscribers simultaneously assumes the responsibility to inform the other mobile telephone companies, which must proceed to deactivate the stolen devices and their own networks.
Note that the deactivation request is declined if the requested IMEI code is invalid in accordance with the relevant international specifications or has not been assigned by the manufacturer to the device to uniquely identify it.
Please, change my IMEI?
In practice, the IMEI number can be illegally changed (instructions can be found easily on the Internet), so the device can be re-operated.
For this reason, IMEI-based deactivation was deemed ineffective in the US.
From 2015, a different practice will be applied in the USA, as the mobile phones of most major manufacturers (Apple, Google, HTC, Huawei, Motorola, Microsoft/Nokia και Samsung) θα προσφέρουν ειδικό «mechanism of dismantling " of stolen devices. Activation or not of this mechanism will be a decision of the user and therefore it is estimated that the effectiveness of this measure will be judged in practice. In fact, the fear has already been expressed that if there is a possibility that some thefts will prove useless, but not all, then the thefts will increase.
Indicatively, the solution that Google adopts on Android is that from the next version of the most widespread smartphone operating system, there will be a protection mechanism against unauthorized resetting the phone to factory settings.
