Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI • Hacker News Board

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#141

Post by londons_explore » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 9:26 AM UTC

boredishBoi wrote: post #139

londons_explore wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My phone required it. When purchased, it had an IMEI of all zeroes, and came with a step by step guide to setting the IMEI from my old phone into it. Apparently that works around phone providers who blacklist or whitelist certain manufacturers.

Can you please expand on your phone? What model is it? It sounds very unusual for the user to be able to change the imei.

A knock-off Umidigi A3 Pro.

It's an awesome Chinese $50 android phone.

Because it hasn't passed all the network tests, most mobile networks would block an entirely random IMEI, so they suggest you type in the IMEI from your old phone (as long as it's 4g - if it isn't, they have a support email address you can contact and they'll give you an IMEI that works in your country)

Even the legit Umidigi A3 Pro's (which cost $80, and have proper certifications) have an 'imei change' tool.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#142

Post by lostlogin » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 10:21 AM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #39

lostlogin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the early European settlers in the US were fleeing religious persecution. But I suppose it wasn’t the USA then... https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html

>A lot of the early European settlers in the US were fleeing religious persecution. What's your point? Some of them turned around and treated people who didn't fit in with them even worse than they themselves had been treated when in Europe. I can think of a couple groups who, in retrospect, the natives should have killed on day 1.

My comment wasn’t clear - tehjoker stated that the US had never let in a lot of persecuted people. The early European colonisers included a lot of small groups fleeing persecution. As you mention, formerly persecuted groups don’t seem to behave better when they get power.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#143

Post by sriram_malhar » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 12:02 PM UTC

Is there a black/underground solution for this?

I can imagine supplying some needy soul with a phone kitted out with a different country's international roaming plan, so that that IMEI was never registered locally, nor associated with a Saudi citizen.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#144

Post by Chris_Chambers » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 12:36 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #2

By supporting Saudi Arabia the West really shoots itself in the foot. You can't lecture other countries about freedom while supporting this regime.

Yes you can.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#145

Post by swebs » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #81

swebs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had to chose between supporting Saudi Arabia and supporting fracking, which would you chose?

That’s a false choice.

They're not completely mutually exclusive, but you can't deny that an increase of supply from one results in a reduction of demand from another.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#146

Post by salawat » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #141

boredishBoi wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please expand on your phone? What model is it? It sounds very unusual for the user to be able to change the imei.

A knock-off Umidigi A3 Pro. It's an awesome Chinese $50 android phone. Because it hasn't passed all the network tests, most mobile networks would block an entirely random IMEI, so they suggest you type in the IMEI from your old phone (as long as it's 4g - if it isn't, they have a support email address you can contact and they'll give you an IMEI that works in your country) Even the legit Umidigi A3 Pro's (which cost…

Not for long I'll wager...

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#147

Post by salawat » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

NotPaidToPost wrote: post #51

binarymax wrote: post #11

I remember back in the 90's, when Intel was going to introduce a unique identifier in their processors that could be used for authentication purposes, it caused a huge uproar and Intel backed down. [0] Having a hardware embedded unique ID that can be (is) used for tracking a known persons location at all times is probably the most intrusive privacy violation we've ever had. That we willingly carry these things around…

The IMEI identifies a device. It is, or should be, useful to lock stolen phones, though it can obviously be used to track someone who keeps the same phone even if they change SIM card. The IMSI identifies the subscriber (and/or the SIM card) even if you change phone. As long as people are able to call and be called and as long as people need to be billed there has to be a reliable form of identification. This is not…

Username checks out. Unfortunately, truth is spoken.

This is the danger inherent to full enumeration of the technologically enabled envelope. This is also the danger of the "market"; as it incentivized the ability to clearly specify the "who" of the customer.

It's why I've been getting increasingly uncomfortable with the economic push away from cash as the primary medium of economic exchange.

The death of the payphone marked the beginning of the end for infrastructure that wasn't in some way dependent or useful as a means of user surveillance.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#148

Post by solarkraft » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 3:50 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #146

londons_explore wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A knock-off Umidigi A3 Pro. It's an awesome Chinese $50 android phone. Because it hasn't passed all the network tests, most mobile networks would block an entirely random IMEI, so they suggest you type in the IMEI from your old phone (as long as it's 4g - if it isn't, they have a support email address you can contact and they'll give you an IMEI that works in your country) Even the legit Umidigi A3 Pro's (which cost…

Not for long I'll wager...

I'll wager the opposite. Of course it's not legal anywhere, but I don't expect any customs people to be able to tell that a phone comes with an changeable/unapproved IMEI.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#149

Post by jwr » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

ddxxdd wrote: post #125

jwr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would the outcome be better? Yes. The world would be a better place if people did the right thing. It's not complicated, really. In this particular case: see a regime that dismembers journalists and hunts women who "run away"? Don't deal with that regime, or anything that is related to it. To point out the obvious, invading other countries, bombing "terrorists" without due process, meddling in affairs of people acr…

>Of course, with a statement like that, there will always be plenty of butsayers. "But..." [and here goes a list of various muddy reasons why everything is relative]. I'll start off by saying that in a world without Saudi oil, the world economy will collapse, and the economic prosperity implicitly assumed by our modern progressive values will evaporate, leaving us with a Stone Age economy and the Medieval values that…

> I'll start off by saying that in a world without Saudi oil, the world economy will collapse, and the economic prosperity implicitly assumed by our modern progressive values will evaporate, leaving us with a Stone Age economy and the Medieval values that come with it.

Funny :-) This is 1) untrue, the world can do very well without Saudi oil, and in fact our future would be better without it given the upcoming climate catastrophe, and 2) exactly the kind of muddy scaremongering reasons I expected.

Just do the right thing. In the long term, we'll always be better off.

Re: Saudi Arabia tracks runaway women by cellphone IMEI

#150

Post by solarkraft » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #118

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking back, it was unbelievable to see how huge the storm caused by Intel's "processor serial number" in Pentium 3 was, that even forced Intel to withdrew it. Meanwhile, nobody has ever said anything about the serial numbers of hard drives, GPUs, motherboards, RAM modules, Ethernet MAC address, etc, etc, etc. Nowadays, basically everything comes with one UUID. Pretty illogical, isn't it? > We've long lost the war o…

Barring an extremely risky, one-off backdoor in the management engine or your board or device firmware; there should be no reason why your hard disk, GPU, board, memory, and NIC UUIDs (MACs are configurable, and random by default in NetworkManager and some other network configuration systems) are available to third parties on a regular basis, unless you put software on your computer to make that happen. Don't run spy…

> unless you put software on your computer to make that happen

Couldn't that be ... any software?