Cloning
When's the last time any of you have seen someone cloned? I had a customer last night who's phone had been cloned. according to the notes on the account it happened when she was in mexico and now she's having a tough time getting her new phone set up (still tdma) I think its time to try gsm don't you?
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Had A Alltel customer come by recently and port over he was in the Virgin Islands the local phone company cloned his phone to like 5-7 people there it was insane glad I wasnt him
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Let me make myself clear... I know what cloning is (when someone clones a subscribers info on a diff phone). I would just like to know more about it; such as how can someone protect themselves from it, how it affects the subscriber etc.
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sharpie said:
Had A Alltel customer come by recently and port over he was in the Virgin Islands the local phone company cloned his phone to like 5-7 people there it was insane glad I wasnt him
Was it a GSM phone?
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Global System for Mobile Communication.
GSM is currently the dominant 2G digital mobile phone standard for most of the world. It determines the way in which mobile phones communicate with the land-based network of towers.
GSM has not been the most popular standard in the United States in the past. CDMA and TDMA, competing standards, together shared most of the market.
However, AT&T Wireless and Cingular, who both used TDMA technology, recently switched to GSM technology. This will narrow the major technologies in the US to two - GSM and CDMA.
The most visible feature of GSM are SIM cards. SIM cards are removable, thumbnail-sized smart cards which identify the user on the network, and can also store information such as phone book ...
(continues)
GSM is currently the dominant 2G digital mobile phone standard for most of the world. It determines the way in which mobile phones communicate with the land-based network of towers.
GSM has not been the most popular standard in the United States in the past. CDMA and TDMA, competing standards, together shared most of the market.
However, AT&T Wireless and Cingular, who both used TDMA technology, recently switched to GSM technology. This will narrow the major technologies in the US to two - GSM and CDMA.
The most visible feature of GSM are SIM cards. SIM cards are removable, thumbnail-sized smart cards which identify the user on the network, and can also store information such as phone book ...
(continues)
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what does that have to do with the cloning thread?
Cloning is where someone modifies their analog equipment to use the same ESN of another user's phone, thereby using their service and billing the calls to the "real" user's bill.
Cloning is just about impossible with GSM. i say just about, because only with enough resources (CRAY supercomputers, various mathemeticians, etc) it conceivably could be done, but the "cloner" could be easily found by tiangulation.
Cloning is where someone modifies their analog equipment to use the same ESN of another user's phone, thereby using their service and billing the calls to the "real" user's bill.
Cloning is just about impossible with GSM. i say just about, because only with enough resources (CRAY supercomputers, various mathemeticians, etc) it conceivably could be done, but the "cloner" could be easily found by tiangulation.
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Plus, with GSM, you have to have the SIM card to complete the 'circuit'. If the SIM card's not a perfect match with what the account has listed, it don't work.
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I haven't seen a cloned customer in over a year. This was when I was working for a premium agent in Lubbock. Since TDMA was still needed and a lot of kids at Texas Tech travel, this was a common occurance. GSM was scarce at the time.
A common route to get to Lubbock is I-20. It seemed that Abilene was a hot spot for this. During heavy traffic weekends like Christmas, Thanksgiving and Spring break, clonners who sit on the over pass of the interstate and it was a free for all. 95% of the time, the fraud department would credit the charges and offer a discount on a new device. I haven't seen this since I have been in the Dallas market since May.
Will
A common route to get to Lubbock is I-20. It seemed that Abilene was a hot spot for this. During heavy traffic weekends like Christmas, Thanksgiving and Spring break, clonners who sit on the over pass of the interstate and it was a free for all. 95% of the time, the fraud department would credit the charges and offer a discount on a new device. I haven't seen this since I have been in the Dallas market since May.
Will
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No Alltel is a CDMA system there billing sucks as well lots of $500 phones bills
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I thought only Analog phones could be cloned am I wrong? Is Rich Brome around for this one? When Digital came out in the U.S. one of the selling points was that Digital protected against cloning due to the digital encription. Mexico and the Virgin Islands have areas where you will get analog and I'm sure it is a cloning target area. i am shipping out on a cruise to the Carribean tomorrow and now thinking twice about using my phone on shore since it has Digital and Analog.
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CDMA wasn't from what I read a long time ago in the Qualcomm website,are you sure that GSM and TDMA were??? I new someone that was cloned back when it was Cell one in Chicago and they found out it happened north of the Illionis border when they were in an analog area.
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That is what probably happened... I know that any of them that I had dealt with were all dual band phones so that could be how it occured. So then in that case, GSM is un-clonable. (i don't think that is the right spelling but its all i got)
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