February 16, 2005
South Korea fights back against phone-cloners and thieves
In Korea where the wireless penetration rate reaches 75 percent, mobile fraud is increasingly becoming a challenge for law enforcement, reports The Korea Herald.
"The government will mandate that mobile-phone operators allocate unique identification codes to the handsets of their new subscribers starting next month, to counter against mobile-phone fraud stemming from stolen and cloned phones.
"The electronic serial numbers on mobile phones have become vulnerable targets for theft, with "phone-cloners" replicating the code on an copied telephone and enabling the users to make telephone calls which are then billed to the original subscriber.
More than 2,000 phone-cloning cases were reported to authorities during the Jan.-July period last year, according to the Communication Ministry. Under Korea's telecommunication law, those who produced cloned phones face a maximum of three years in prison or 20 million won fine."
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