Hi,
sorry for you all that lost your phone, stolen or lost anyhow by being
careless. I also had lost a phone, but not my FR :-)
I read the thread, and think about my contract. I have no gprs as of
my old phone didn't let me opening
web or wap pages.
I have some questions and ideas that are in my brain :-)
Is there any way to use analog modem connections ?
I don't know how much CPU power is needed but when possible a phone
could send more data to a dedicated
number we could provide for that.
If a real modem connection couldn't be used, what about creating a
tone modulation for the data to be send
as a 'spoken' message to be send back to a number as a voice recorder.
The voice recorder then (a Linux PC :-) could decode the data and
store the data.
All the data could be collected on a web service to probably get the
bad guys behind to give that information to
the police.
The web service also could provide information about stolen devices,
thus when a phone gets any wlan connection,
it could check for stolen state. This is not that spoof able I think,
because the web sevice may be as usual password protected.
But the server could provide sms, mms or phone gateways for fallback
options. More gateways could be provided by us.
The new gateway information could be uploaded by interacting with the
user (software updates :-)
If a phone didn't have gprs, sms, mms, or wlan, sending prepared 'data
voices' would be an option. It didn't need to send much at first to get
an answer about the stolen state in that way. I think the recorded
data could be decoded in both directions, you don't need
much cpu power, because it will be unidirectional, or let the
'protocol' enough time between packed sent and anser packets
for decoding.
Doing an active voice call may save us the cost of callbacks or
sending back sms. With a proper longtime protocol with long pauses or a
better solution a lot could be done.
Usually you could activate this when the sim card get's changed
without any notice to the user. He should still use the phone a while
to collect information. We then could start a preinstalled application
to authenticate the sim card change. If not options are many.
The PIN entry of the normal card could be replaced by the PIN you
provide. The user then wouldn't realize it, but claims to enter
the correct, we simply accept, but start the timer for the above
actions.
Or we leave the user in claim that the documentation of it's sim card
provider doesn't seem to be correct and he/she must issue
a call with the service provider.
At that point, the service provider couldn't help for that special
phone. The new 'user' HAS to contact the manufacturer and so on
you probably get your phone back, because the manufacturer should
request for sending back the phone.
Getting the state of stolen, the phone could anyway send a message to
a police station near the user with spd-say, after
the 'anti-theft' server has located the next police station's
telephone number with any of the above options sent back to the
phone. (Maybe with manual data entry of the phone numbers by us users
with POI collection, hehe tangoGPS :-)
That way the phone could help actively. Not only 'data voices' could
be sent.
Also the collected wlan, phone towers, GPS, voice, phone numbers and
what else could help to locate the guys behind,
as the phones will walk up to the key guys before it would reselled.
(Where they all are located would be very nice POI data)
With that data, we could help the police.
A note about the attack to people currently having your phone: They
may not know, that they have a stolen phone, thus
you get to be a 'criminal' and beware, you may also get reatacked by
the person :-)
Giving the police the collected data, would propably help much more.
What about all my stupid brain stuff ?
Discuss about the possibilities - even stupid ideas as the old
'acustic coupler'. You don't really need all the modern GPRS stuff :-)
If that is possible also the cost of operation is not very high I
think - even you change your card (you know to start a separate
unlocker)
Lothar
-- | Rapid Prototyping | XSLT Codegeneration | http://www.lollisoft.de
Lothar Behrens
Heinrich-Scheufelen-Platz 2
73252 Lenningen
_______________________________________________
Openmoko community mailing list
community@lists.openmoko.org
http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
