One person recently discovered to his dismay that his mobile phone bill included a large number of calls he had never made. He verified his bill with the mobile phone company that indeed the call came from his mobile phone number. A lady who was visiting her sick friend in a hospital left her car in the parking lot of the hospital compound, forgetting to close the door. When she returned, her cell phone that she left in her car was missing. A teenager was showing his new mobile phone to his girlfriend inside a restaurant. As they left the restaurant, someone pushed the young man from behind as if he were trying to hail a taxi. Moments later, the boy felt something missing from his pocket. When he tried to rummage through his pocket, his new cell phones were gone. These three people were victims of cell phone fraud.
With the mass proliferation of cell phones almost everywhere, criminals have found ways in which they can freely obtain information and contact their criminal associates and prevent authorities from detecting wiretaps by using illegally obtained cell phones. Mobile phone fraud has become a concern for law enforcement officers around the world. The method employed by these criminals would be the use of two types of equipment in their criminal activities to make use of the assigned number of a legal mobile phone to make their calls from a stolen cell phone for free, courtesy of the owner of the assigned legitimate mobile phone . phone number he has stolen.
That’s how they do it. When you buy a phone, there is already a number pre-assigned to your phone known as an Electronic Serial Number or ESN. The phone retailer will also provide you with another set of numbers known as your Mobile Identification Number, or MIN. These two sets of numbers combined will form your own unique phone numbers and serve as your phone’s fingerprints for signal recognition and validation of your phones at cell sites. However, the sad thing is that there is a piece of equipment called an ESN reader that criminals can use to carry out their illegal activities. If you turn on your cell phones, whether or not you use them, these criminals can read your ESN and MIN numbers by using your ESN reader by simply turning it on and pulling your assigned cell phone number out of thin air. Once they have got hold of your phone numbers all they have to do is use it on the phone by using another machine whereby they can enter your ESN and MIN number into other cell phones they have also stolen and bingo! ! They can then call their criminal associates anywhere, anytime and you pay the bill for their calls.
The authorities have now taken the necessary measures to combat these acts which are highly detrimental to the public use of telephones. You can imagine that if your ESN and MIN phones can be hacked by these criminals out of the blue, you can even suspect that you are a part of their group, as their criminal activities were done through their cell phone security numbers, moreover the fact that you will be charged for the cost of your calls that you are not aware of.. UGH! How bad can it be?