The Canadian Telecommunications Association (CWTA) recently started a campaign called “Protect Your Data” to bring awareness to the masses about cellphone theft. This also saw all the carriers and Police join up to establish a national database of all the stolen devices serial numbers. Today NDP MP Mike Sullivan has tabled a private member’s bill that aims to make tampering with the devices IMEI number (International Mobile Equipment Identification) illegal.
In the press release Sullivan stated that “Cell phone theft is primarily a crime of opportunity, because any stolen mobile device can easily be reactivated with a different carrier. This will make it easier to track lost or stolen phones and will cripple the illegal cell phone trade by making it a criminal offence to tamper with the cell phone identification numbers.”
According to the CWTA the number of lost or stolen cellphone in 2012 was just above 263,000, this is down from about 420,000 in 2011. In total there’s approximately 27 million wireless subscribers in Canada.
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