They can do that even now.This system is a good thing if implemented correctly as stolen/used phones are often used in criminal/anti-national activities.
That would be too simple(changing/cloning mac address on pc/router is child's play),probably a combination of some embedded hardware info+gsm signal.
Maybe the serial no of the Cellphone's motherboard
Recycled Stolen Phone
I think they already have a decent mechanism to track stolen phones.. i have personally seen a friend of mine get back his stolen phone within days after he routed his request through a high ranking police official.
The gangs in east india area sends all stolen phones to bangladesh.
That is why samsung top end models & iphones are best, once stolen they can't be used again except for dismantling them for parts.I think they already have a decent mechanism to track stolen phones.. i have personally seen a friend of mine get back his stolen phone within days after he routed his request through a high ranking police official.
I too wanted to get back my 4 month old OP9Pro stolen from the Kolkata Metro last year, but i was told the phones signal is coming from Bangladesh now so the police wont be able to help
Why they can't be used ? does Samsung/Apple blocks the whole phone for future use ?
Hmm. Easy access to Bangladesh for all shady work.I think they already have a decent mechanism to track stolen phones.. i have personally seen a friend of mine get back his stolen phone within days after he routed his request through a high ranking police official.
I too wanted to get back my 4 month old OP9Pro stolen from the Kolkata Metro last year, but i was told the phones signal is coming from Bangladesh now so the police wont be able to help
Samsung top end models & Apple iphones have hardware encryption that cannot be bypassed by any publicly known means(hence the FBI reward to hacker group for unlocking iphone of that Pakistani US terrorist couple using a zero day vulnerability) so if password/screen lock/pattern is not known that one cannot factory reset/format/modify boot loader of those phones to install custom rom/original rom again to use those phones. Only option is to dismantle the phone & then sell parts as spare.
It doesn't "deter" thefts as thief has no way of knowing in advance which phone he will stole in a crowd. It is more of a "consolation" that you know nobody will be going to use your stolen phone in future. Mid tier series models don't have the strong hardware encryption. You can check on xda forum for various samsung models & if you see custom roms/TWRP available for a particular samsung model then it means anyone can reset/flash that samsung phone model to make it reusable without knowing the password/pattern.
I had been told the same thing by the cyber cell dept in the Police, the thieves themselves admit that stolen iphones have to be used for its parts only, the imei info of the phone cannot be changed like they do for other phones hence if even if they factory reset the phone somehow it will be trackable.
At least use common sense, if it was that easy to unlock iphones then this wouldn't be a major news headlines in newspapers all over the world back in 2016.