Cell Phone Trafficking: Oh Tech You Didn't

Cell phone trafficking has caused a considerable amount of harm to consumers and the wireless industry. Wireless carriers are being forced to raise the prices of their cell phones in order to offset the losses incurred from criminals trafficking cell phones. In turn, legitimate customers are turning to the black market because they cannot afford to pay for the phone through a reliable source. Hackers have made this crime possible to commit and have undoubtedly aided in the proliferation of this crime. Let us look at a theoretical case involving two technology companies and the jailbreaking of phones. 

A smaller, prepaid wireless phone company we will call Wireless Ways, was performing an audit they do twice a year on their accounting books. During the audit, they noticed that while they were selling more phones than the previous year at that time, their revenue did not seem to properly reflect the number of phones sold. The company decided to launch an investigation into where their prepaid service phones were going and why they were losing profits.  

The initial investigation found that there were many companies selling “unlocked” versions of their prepaid cell phones. Wireless Ways was shocked to learn that so many companies had managed to unlock their devices and resell them to consumers. They decided to have a digital forensic company analyze one of the “unlocked” phones to determine whether they could find any other information. Upon further digital forensic investigation, it was determined that the companies selling the “unlocked” phones were able to do so with an unlocking tool purchased from another tech company. 

The tool allowed the other companies to unlock Wireless Ways network phones in bulk for resale on the black market for use on any network for consumers. This becomes a problem because it takes profits from legitimate sales channels and the taxable income from those legitimate sales. Not only that, but the process of “unlocking” cell phones damages the original functionality, voiding any warranties the consumer thought they had when they purchased the phone, making the consumer financially liable for anything wrong with the phone unknowingly. 

Without digital forensics, who knows how much revenue Wireless Ways could have lost from companies purchasing the tech company’s unlocking tool?. Now, Wireless Ways will be able to pursue the other tech company to take the unlocking tool off the market and recover some of the lost revenue from them releasing their tool.