ViVo : 13.000 smartphones with the same IMEI were traced by the Indian police

Manufacturers use International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) to arrange their smartphones, which is why this number is unique to each smartphone.

Αthis allows carriers to create lists of stolen smartphones and the police to track them down if necessary. However, the Indian police recovered over 13.000 of her smartphones Vivo with the same IMEI.

How smartphones were detected

The problem came to light when a police officer in Meerut, India went to have it repaired Vivo his smartphone at a local store. As soon as he received the repaired mobile he found that the IMEI you had was not the same with what he wrote on the box he was in when he bought it. Additionally, it could not connect to the mobile network.

This led the police officer to launch an investigation, which eventually led to the location 13.557 smartphones of Vivo, which all have the same IMEI.

Known tactic for a specific purpose

All over the world, changing the IMEI of a smartphone is illegal and prosecuted. Many people are interested in phones with common IMEI or even without IMEI because it is not easy for providers to monitor and are rarely blacklisted. However, if one is interested in buying such a smart phone one should look into black market.

But it seems that in India they are using its smartphones Vivo so as to create undetectable devices, and indeed there are specific repair shops that carry out such modification.

This incident is not the first in the history of the company. Last year, police located 50.000 thousands Vivo smartphones with the same IMEI and had found that everything went through a specific store.

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