Well, my car was broken into this morning for the third time in the last two years. The first two times the theives didn't seem to know what to make of my Empeg and actually left it on the floor of my car. This time they were careful to take it and even pull the mounting sled. Maybe it's a sign of the Rio Car's surge in popularity... (I'll be looking at upcoming eBay sales closely.)

On the positive side, they didn't pull the tuner!! =) (And no, I'm not selling it: the Empeg is definitely getting replaced.)

Are we still encouraged to report our serial numbers to Empeg's support people? Which brings up another point: is the serial number anywhere on the invoicing sent for the units? I don't think I jotted it down anywhere myself.

18GB (+30GB upgrade) Blue
2000-2002

-omf

MAN I'm sorry to hear that.

When you get your replacement Rio, go out and buy a PS1 portable game bag. They only cost $14 and they work very well. There are some extra pockets that I use to keep my Cel phone/wallet and PDA in. It's actually easier on me to carry the EMPEG around than it was to carry all these separate things...

Did I mention that it's much harder to steal when it's sitting next to you?

I'm really sorry to hear about that, but:


Well, my car was broken into this morning for the third time in the last two years

and you *still* left your empeg in it??

Good luck with your replacement search. And please don't leave it in the car. By my reckoning you're due a break-in every 8 months, and I'd hate to see you lose another empeg.

you might get lucky now on buying another one, but i tihnk if u loose it again, your toast

Hi

The serial number isn't on the invoice, but it is in our sales system. 080000547 - if anyone comes across this unit for sale, be sure to let Oscar know!

Meantime, I've added the player to the blacklist.

Rob

You've been broken into your car twice, had incredible luck twice and you still leave your empeg in you car?
Man, talk about faith !

I can't help but think that this was very careless of you, especially since you've had two serious warnings.

That aside, this does not mean that I don't believe it really sucks and I'm very sorry for your loss. I hope you'll be able to find another empeg soon.

Im sorry to hear that. It sucks to get robbed. You should definately pull the unit out or find a way to secure it in the car.

Unforuantely, they don't make these anymore

Thanks, Rob.

UGH. I've had my CD player stolen before. Now I park in a garage so I don't have to worry about it as much. If you park on street, you're asking for it to get stolen.
I feel for you . I'd be so mad! Usually, it's kids that steal such things and they live near by..so keep an eye/ear out.

A friend of mine just had her car broken into while at home. They took her cell phone, an almond joy, and some CD's. Well, she called her cell phone company and got the last # which was dialed. It just happened to be friends of the people who stole the phone. She got the address and confronted the little twerps who stole it! She got everything back, cept the Almond Joy...I'd love to see the faces on those punks.
Me, I would have scared them straight with the help of an officer and their parents and a nice trip through a jail system.

ya stealing a cell phone isnt the brightest thing in the world

Some people are just plain dumb, It like people who steal credit cards, if you use one after it is reported stolen, you are busted right there on the spot.

We've suffered a spate of 'skimmed' CC fraud @ work recently. The police are not interested - there's too much of this type of crime going on and they don't have the resources to deal with it. The CC companies aren't too bothered either since with 'cardholder not present' transactions ALL liability lies with the merchant so they are ok too. We approached the banks asking for a system whereby we are assured of payment, guess what, one doesn't exist!
The upshot of all this is while the criminals may be dumb there's not much chance of them getting nabbed here in the UK

Parking in a garage is all well and good, but now having to put extra security on the garage as the little [censored] have now started to try and pick the lock on that!
Three weeks and counting then Im out of this hell hole!

Stealing cellphones is one of the biggest street crimes in the UK now. A vast number of them are stolen, the SIMM removed, and resold. With current GSM technology the handset cannot then be identified by the network - only the original SIMM can be disabled.

The networks and manufacturers have agreed a new security measure for future models - presumably a move back to the old analogue ESN type of ID.

Rob

I thought they could identify a phone by its own serial number type thing because alot of phones are locked into particular networks. It can be very hard to unlock a phone from one network as it is not just the simm card.

One of the problems is that BT and vodafone refuse to lock out phones by the phones number where as orange and one to one will do it for stolen phones

Interesting - I also thought that until I saw a BBC News bulletin that suggested the technology to enable individual handset identification was new and wouldn't be in handsets for several months.

Rob

UK Nokia cellular phones (prob. not just UK or Nokia though) have an IMEI number in flash memory. This number is effectively the phone's serial number. Also stored in the flash are optional provider flags, these prevent (say) an Orange handset being used on another network.
I don't know about theft prevention as such but what I DO know is there are partial flash ROM images on the 'net that will get around the network provider lockouts (i.e. allow a handset to be non-network specific, innocent use?). Additionally, once you look into this further you will find you can re-write the IMEI number with something else which effectively negates any network provider theft prevention.

My take on all this is that the handset manufacturers need to burn the IMEI number into non-eraseable memory - probably not easy in mid/high volume manufacturing though.

Incidentally, Sunday markets are full of guys with laptops "unlocking" handsets for (circa) £15. While this is probably illegal (because AFAIK they don't own the copyright on the partial ROM images they burn) the worst part is they are possibly unlocking YOUR stolen handset.

Not quite, the phone has an IMEI (as others have pointed out). Some networks have now got IMEI blocking for stolen phones, so even if you put a new SIM in it, it won't work.

Problem is, lots of the phones have reprogrammable IMEIs (if you have the right tools - ie a PC, some software & the right cables). Just recently a law was proposed (passed?) that made (a) changing IMEIs or (b) selling equipment to change IMEIs was illegal.

There's no real legitimate reason to change a phone's IMEI unless it's stolen; removing the network lock is also a bit dodgy as it undermines the pricing model...

Hugo

ya stealing a cell phone isnt the brightest thing in the world

Someone hacked into the email system of a business where I had purchased an item by credit card, and got my credit card information.

The first thing this criminal genius did was to place long-distance telephone calls using that information. It didn't take long for him to be caught.

tanstaafl.

The first thing this criminal genius did was to place long-distance telephone calls using that information. It didn't take long for him to be caught.

My roommate the first semester of college thought it would be a good idea to use my calling card to call her mother, sister, and boyfriend, and if that wasn't dumb enough, she bought a bunch of [censored] on my credit card and sent it to herself. It was so much fun to see her removed from the premises in hand cuffs. And I got a double room to myself for the rest of the semester, which was good too.

The first thing this criminal genius did was to place long-distance telephone calls

But there are the not-quite-as-dumb variants. A Seattle friend had a single credit card lifted from a (locked) locker at a health club one lunchtime here, but didn't have a clue (they left everything else alone in his wallet including ~$100 cash) until the next morning when Visa called to see if he was in Las Vegas making multiple $1500 cash advances. Yup, this particular operation Fedexed credit cards to Vegas and they got the money. There may have been multiple cards in the overnight envelope, but he didn't hear any more about it except that they hadn't been caught. Cute, eh?

Jim

Yup, this particular operation Fedexed credit cards to Vegas and they got the money. There may have been multiple cards in the overnight envelope, but he didn't hear any more about it except that they hadn't been caught. Cute, eh?

Yeah, that's right up there on the cute scale with the guy who got a free Pathfinder from our Nissan dealership up the block. Amazing what you can do with some careless employees, a drivers licence, and a health insurance card (usually has your SSN). The car was probably out of the country long before identity theft was even suspected (about a month and a half later).

Someone once opened an AOL account using one of my credit cards. They even ordered a bunch of items off of the AOL store and had them delivered to their house. Needless to say, it was pretty easy to track them down. The worst part was trying to get AOL to close the account and stop bothering me!

Well, I live in a relatively small city, so I don't typically worry much about crime (though clearly it does happen...) I never thought of my car as standing out much until I got custom wheels put on it. I honestly think that made all the difference: it was at that point that my car became a target, despite the fact that these wheels or only subtly different from the factory originals. The price I pay for looking cool!

Anyway, yes, I typically park in a garage, but this one time I happened not to. *sigh*

It'll be interesting to see what the insurance company does to try and replace my Empeg. I wonder how often they have to deal with eBay...

-Oscar

Okay i have said it before but here is my tip towards keeping empeg and car secure.

Get an old wiring harness or make one out of some wire and crimps so it looks like you can plug in a stereo to it. Now attach this to a small piece of wood slightly higher than the empeg this then goes into an empty cage and locks in leaving a bunch of wire hanging out of the dash which looks like someone has already stolen your head unit.

Oh yeah and don't leave the empeg in the damn car !

The Dutch police have an interesting approach to cell phone theft.

They give the network providers lists of IMEI numbers of stolen phones. In return, they get the phone numbers that are currently used on these stolen phones.

Then they (the police) start bombarding these numbers with SMS messages like "this is a stolen phone; return it to the police". The idea is that your friends will eventually want to know who is sending you these SMS messages all day ...

I have no idea how effective this approach is, though.

That's a good one, with the only downside being that when the SIM memory is full (on phones that store unread messages on the SIM, which I think is most of them) they won't beep anymore and the messages will just queue up.

It does make it hard to sell the phone on though, I believe they were sending one SMS every 3 minutes

Hugo

I've also seen how (excuse my non tech cell lingo) cell phone scanners can pick up the serial # from cell phones when they're in use and use them to place their own calls thus making free calls on someone else's bill. The guy usually won't find out until his bill comes.

Hey Jimhogan, how do you know B. Naeve??

Hey Jimhogan, how do you know B. Naeve??

(To explain for others...) I *don't* know B. Naeve, but EDub informs me that this person also had his Visa Fedexed to Vegas. I have to guess that it is some sort of ring taking in credit cards from multiple cities.

Vegas. There is so much madness happening there, it has to be one of the few places that $1500 cash advances pass without a blink.

Jim

What about an addition to emplode that will log the serial number and host ip address the first time that combination appears at a central server. If the empeg is stolen, an owner need only request updates for the last couple of ip addresses that serial showed up at....

Greg