Datasheet

22
Chapter 1: Utilities and Security
PhoneBAK Anti-theft
$$ US
Here’s another take on the shut-it-down, wipe-it-out, and try-to-
retrieve-it app. PhoneBAK acts as your agent to report on the
approximate location of your phone, alert you if someone inserts an
unauthorized SIM card into your BlackBerry, provide details about
that usage, and display a warning on your phone declaring that bad
things happen to bad people (or whatever else you’d like to say).
It all starts as soon as you download and install PhoneBAK and assign
it a killer password; here’s a place where you want to pull out all the
stops and make it a doozy. (And then please don’t write it down on the
inside flap of your BlackBerry case. If you need a written copy, be sure
to store it far away from where the phone lives.)
This app makes use of the password you set in conjunction with two
pieces of identity carried by most BlackBerry devices. First there is
the IMSI on the SIM. In something closer to plain English, that is the
service-subscriber key (IMSI) that is part of the information encoded
on the removable subscriber identity module (SIM) card that is
installed in the phone.
Once you configure PhoneBAK on the BlackBerry you can make it
sound an alarm if someone removes your SIM and replaces it with
their own. The app can also report to you about the new SIM useful
information that could be used by a cellphone provider to prevent a
stolen or missing phone from accessing their network.
In fact, the message that PhoneBAK sends in this situation would
include the phone number being used on the substitute SIM. And it can
also report the location of the phone by area code and cell tower ID.
PhoneBAK is automatically turned on each time the BlackBerry is
powered up.
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