Growing up I was forced to watch a lot of the series Due South. My mother and sister both fancied the Mountie.
Aside from slightly mentally scarring me for life the series taught me one thing - Canadians are lovely people that never commit crime.
And it’s true, according to the mobile companies, nobody steals handsets in the great northern expanse of land. But, for some bizarre reason the US mobile companies have the same opinion of Americans. That’s just silly.
The Register has reported on the exasperation of Pete Gillespie who has had two mobiles stolen and not once has his Canadian operator, Roger’s Wireless, been able to put a block on the handset.
The company said it simply doesn’t do that - talent. Nor does it trace where the phone is using GPS.
According to the Reg, this is nothing special for the US. Europe may have implemented IMEI blacklisting years ago but US and Canadian providers continue to ignore the practice.
“Presently, we don’t have any North American operators connected to our [IMEI blacklist] database,” says James Moran, fraud and security director of the GSM Association (GSMA). “When we’ve raised the issue with these operators in the past, what they’ve said is that handset theft has not been an issue North America - or least not to the same degree it has been in Europe and the rest of the world.”
Maybe the US didn’t have the lovable gangs of pick pockets like in Oliver.
A quick check of my Rough Guide to San Francisco, one of the least crime ridden areas of the US, suggests otherwise. “The biggest problem for most travelers is the threat of mugging”. Even the accompanying picture suggests that pick pockets are rife.
It just seems odd that the US, which could easily be described as having a crime problem hasn’t yet done anything about this.
Still, you’d better pick a [phon] pocket or two boys. You’d better pick a pocket or two.
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Ewan on 
When I was in the States, I lost my Sprint handset. They replaced it in a day or so. Likewise with my Vodafone handset.
Posted by smstextnews on July 24th, 2008 at 12:20 pm.Has blacklisting really done much to stop handset theft in the UK? Didn't stop the little toerag who nicked Ewan's N95, nor does it stop all the handsets stolen in the UK and other Western countries that end up in places where blacklists don't go…
“Nor does it trace where the phone is using GPS.” — does any operator actually do that?
Posted by Carlo on July 24th, 2008 at 2:33 pm.I suspect that my N95 was quickly transported out of the UK into the hands
Posted by smstextnews on July 25th, 2008 at 3:08 am.of some non-operator-blacklist country chappy.
“Nor does it trace where the phone is using GPS.” — does any operator actually do that?
No, and you generally need a 3rd party app on the handset to do this too…
Posted by Ben Smith on July 25th, 2008 at 5:17 am.An operator can trace where a phone is without using GPS. It looks at the tower with which the phone is registered.
Posted by TerenceEden on July 25th, 2008 at 5:50 am.