Standard Mischief

Recently, in the news there have been stories about people with ties to the middle east going around and buying mass quantities of pay-as-you-go cellphones. A few people have speculated what the heck was going on. Were they making them into Improvised explosive devices (IED), or reselling them to teh illegal immigrants?

Actually no, it’s simpler than that. I left the same comment over at SayUncle and Shots Across The Bow, and at the latter, someone was impressed enough by my insight to revise their own post (though apparently not impressed enough for him to link to my blog, or at the very least mention me by name).

So here’s the poop. There is a company out there called Tracfone, and they sell prepaid phone service. It’s the ideal service for identity thieves, paranoid people, undocumented workers, teenagers without credit, people who have a little action going on the side, and people like me who hate talking on the phone but need to be accessible. The reason for this is that you can get a phone, voicemail, SMS, and email to SMS gateway without giving out your name or other personally identifying information. The cost can be very cheap, as low as $8.33 a month if you buy a year’s service in advance and use it an average of 20 minutes or less a month (minutes roll over). It can also be pretty expensive (the same deal works out to 40 cents a minute, though it’s cheaper if you buy more minutes). This is possibly a good place to mention that prepaid phones are not subject to the local municipality special taxes. My county gouges residents with a $3 per month tax, which is a tax of 10% on say a $30 per month basic plan. We do, however, get to pay sales tax on the prepaid minute cards.

To get you to use their service they also sell the phones cheap as a loss leader. This is my phone below, the Nokia 1100b:

(Click on the picture for higher-rez picture (130 KB), as a pop-up if you allow javascript)

It’s resting on my 31337, old skool OmniKey/ULTRA keyboard. (Marco tells me it’s worth 2 bills, me, I just like the clicky. As you can see, I have been afraid to wash it because I’m afraid the clicky will go away. It’s a tactile feedback thingy, you wouldn’t understand.)

You get a basic GSM phone that’s not only locked to Tracfone, but also has custom Tracfone firmware that shows you how much service you have remaining. It’s a dual band, digital only, b/w LCD, less than 4 oz base model thingy, but it works just great. You don’t get a camera, Bluetooth, IR syncing, laptop modem, Internet-tube browsing or any JavaBeans. There is a handy white LCD, set into the top, that makes a good flashlight.

Here’s the inside:

(Click on the picture for higher-rez picture (216 KB), as a pop-up if you allow javascript)

This phone does not have the standard Nokia “m-bus” or “f-bus” port, but as you can see inside the red circle, there are a number of gold contact pads for programing. The resellers connect their computer here and wipe that custom Tracfone firmware. At this point, you have a basic GMS phone that could be used on any GMS service. Inside the battery compartment, on the lower left hand side is the spot for the SIM card.

In addition to reselling them on Ebay (look carefully below the keypad for the Tracfone logo. This link will eventually die, of course), I’m sure a number of them get sold overseas. In fact, I believe this phone was specifically designed as an inexpensive phone for the third world, but don’t quote me on that.

I’ve seen these $20 phones for sale at Mall-Wart, other chains, and dollar type discount stores. If they wipe the firmware, they seem to be able to sell the phones for about 35 bux. Tracfone, of course, doesn’t like this, but they go over the line when they lawyer up and try to use the courts as their own personal blunt instrument. Don’t use our government, by and for the people, to prop up your crappy business model.

Because it can be tough to identify resellers that don’t advertise, or resellers that sell overseas, the other thingy Tracfone seems to be doing is to limit the number of phones a person can buy at a time. As you can see from the news story that above guy linked to, make it worthwhile, and people will drive around to every location to buy whatever daily minimum is allowed. (This should also show the futility of those “one gun a month” laws, but it won’t, and legitimate customers will continue to be inconvenienced, while criminals will just use multiple people, and multiple locations to circumvent the law as needed.)

Finally I’d like to mention that this weekend I went shopping, to see if I could score another model 1100. At Target, they had one, but it was priced at $30. At Wal-Mart, one store had a 1100, but it was bundled with a prepaid top-up card at $30, and another store they were all out, but had a newer, possibly harder to hack Motorola V170 at $20 each.

Update: A news report also also states, “They sell them without the packaging or charger.” This also seems to point to overseas sales, because in many places the wallwart charger won’t plug into the local outlets. GSM 850/1900 MHz phones like the Nokia 1100 work, acording to Wikipedia, “United States, Canada, and many other countries in the Americas“. If we assume that the wallwart charger isn’t used because it won’t fit, then the phones must be being resold in somewhere in South America, such as Argentina or Chile.

Related Tags: Tracfone, Terrorist, loss leader, cellphone, improvised explosive device, IED, explosive, Nokia 1100, Nokia 1100b, 1100, Nokia