Fancy Buying a Looted iPhone or BlackBerry from the Riots? It Wont Work!

Yup, there soon will be a bunch of stolen handsets flooding Craiglist, eBay, Gumtree and the likes that those thieving scumbags stole from a variety of stores. The thing is that all UK networks are blocking all the stolen phones. Hah!

Macworld spoke to the UK networks regarding all those pilfered phones and concensus of opinion was that the networks will just check stock records for each looted store, and add the IMEI number associated with each phone to the Equipment Identity Register which will block them from working with any SIM cards in under a day.

Within two days the phones will also be banned from being used on any UK network.

OK, so this wont prevent the moral lacking sellers of these stolen mobiles from still putting them for sale but your gut-instinct should be to avoid anyone pushing a bargain iPhone, BlackBerry or new handset. I’d certainly recommend going the official route – let’s face it, these stores could do with some help as well.

If you risk getting your bargain you may just find yourself with a neat looking paperweight 😉

Hopefully people are getting clued-up on this overseas as these criminals will no doubt try looking for buyers outside of the UK.

You have been warned!