Trafficking of Cell Phones: The More You Know

Every day, more and more people are finding the conveniences of having advanced technology at their fingertips wherever they go and are embracing them. Unfortunately, while technological advances do make day-to-day life easier, it also increases the susceptibility to being a victim of crime. Cell phone trafficking is where criminals unlock or jailbreak phones in order to sell them at a higher value on the streets or the black market. Many consumers do not realize the dangers that come with purchasing an unlocked or jailbroken phone, and one day it may cost them more than they bargained for. 

There are two main ways that criminals obtain cell phones for trafficking: street crimes or buying phones in bulk. There are many different types of street crimes committed in the pursuit of cell phones and smartphones such as robbery, identity theft, and fraud. In 2013, 3.1 million smartphones were reported stolen in the U.S. But it is not just in the U.S. that cell phone crimes are on the rise. Police from around the world have reported an increase in violent crimes involving stolen phones. 

Another way that criminals obtain phones is by buying the phones in bulk. There are two ways for someone to obtain cell phones in bulk; one way is to run to different stores and buy the maximum amount of prepaid cell phones a store will willingly sell to an individual. Another way they buy in bulk is by starting contracts with wireless companies that they never plan to fulfill, also known as credit muling. 

Once the phones are obtained, they are generally sent to a location to be unlocked or jailbroken, wiped, and repackaged for sale to unsuspecting customers. Once the phones are sold, criminals use the profits to fund other various street crimes such as fraud and terrorism. Many consumers do not realize that this is one of the dangers of buying an unlocked or jailbroken phone, seeing it as a harmless act to enable more features on their devices until it is too late.  

Unlocking or jailbreaking a cell phone or smartphone is how criminals gain access in order to retrieve or wipe data off the device. There are four types of jailbreaking: tethered jailbreaking is where a computer is required each time the device is rebooted; untethered jailbreaking is where you can make changes, run programs, and reboot without consequences; semi-tethered jailbreaking is where if you reboot the device, you may not be able to run jailbreak programs; and semi-untethered jailbreaking is where a device needs to be jailbroken every time the device is rebooted but it can be done with a program on the device itself instead of needing an external computer. 

There is only one pro to a jailbroken phone for consumers, privilege escalation on the device.   Privilege escalation provides the ability to download apps previously blocked by the phone manufacturer and various other capabilities. While many find this one pro is worth pursuing, they generally do not understand or foresee the consequences that come with it. Some of the many consequences of a jailbroken phone are no automatic updates, voids phone’s manufacturer’s warranty, shortened battery life, inferior functionality, and security problems. According to a Trustonic article, of those who reported their phone stolen, 12% said they had fraudulent charges made to their accounts and 10% said they had company information stolen from their devices. 

Another consequence of buying a jailbroken or unlocked phone is that it causes the price of phones through legitimate sales channels to go up due to profits that were lost from not being able to fulfill a service contract. In fact, cell phone trafficking has cost the wireless industry more than $1 billion, which also means lost money in taxes to the government. But with the help of digital forensics, criminals in cell phone trafficking schemes are being brought to justice.