The latest mobile industry reports are stating that the handsets which have been stolen in the riots sweeping Britain will work as a paperweight or it may be little more than paperweight. In this regard those industries also surveyed the market and have found out some trusted shops from Croydon to Salford, which looted handset selling is at the high.

In this regard the operators and retailers have started to claim that they will bring such method with the help of which the stolen handset can be dominated. They also declared if anyone buys such stolen handset from the stores then their handset will be simply kicked off from the network service provider, which will behave more than just a paperweight.

With the sequence to the fact the spokesperson of O2 has said “As soon as we identify any handset which has been stolen, it has been blocked automatically across all the network by using this routine process. If the handset which has been stolen is still new then also it works same way.”

In this regard he has added “A handset contains an International Mobile Equipment Identity or IMIE number, which the help of which it is very easy to tack the handset, moreover there are various systems (such as Immobilise), with the help of which police and industry can easily send the list of stolen handsets to the operators for blocking.”

Also they have stated that as soon as one purchases a handset from the retailer, the retailer will upload that number as stock details of the provider website.

But, the police have stated “According to the Mobile Telephones Re programming Act 2002, the IMIE of the stolen handsets can be changed easily by doing a simple programming but it will be against the law.”