wrote in message
...
On Tue, 21 Sep 2010 14:52:03 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:


wrote in message
. ..
On Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:51:22 -0400, "Harry ?"
wrote:

I'm not familiar with thievery of cell phone equipment and services.

What does Jailbreaking, rooting, and bricking mean?

I am not sure about all of the new phone contracts but there are some
companies that give you a free phone that is locked to their service
if you sign up for a long term contract.
People unlock them and go to another, cheaper service, leaving the
original contractor holding the bag for that phone he expected to
amortize over several years.
Now that money is harder to borrow, these plans may be more
restrictive because this is basically a loan but they used to be real
easy to qualify for.. They loan you the money to buy the phone and you
pay them back a few bucks a month in your phone bill. The locked phone
is the collateral, theoretically useless if you breach the contract.
Of course if they are lost or stolen, unlocking them makes them a
phone again, for drug dealers or anyone else who wants a throwaway
phone.
Back in the analog days, the trick was just cloning the ESN so you
could use a phone on someone elses dime. That got a lot harder to do
on a digital phone but I bet someone has figured it out. I lost
interest when my Moto bag phones stopped working (two with one ESN).

Which has nothing to do with the legality of doing this to a phone...
seems
like you've changed the subject.


No the original subject was just whether these people had the ability
to alter things.

The original subject included a false comparison between people altering
their phone vs. modifying guns by common criminals, most of whom are not too
bright.