I am selling a Nokia AT&T Phone: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=3068634280

a bidder asked me for the number under the battery, but i am not sure if he is shady or not, any help on this would be great thanks

His email to me: i need to know if this phone is compatible with my cell provider. i can determin this by the ESM # located on the back of the phone under the battery. the number must be 11 didgets in length and consits of all numbers no letters. if you can foward this info to me i can check with my provider thank you for your time and help on this matter mike

strange that he would bid before recieving an answer to his question...

 

tell him you can determine by the model number... esn has nothing to do with it.

 

model number is wrong, cause a 8260 for tdma for att is diffrent then the 8260 for cingular for tdma..it wont work to well in new york!!

Give him the ESN not like he can do anything you have the phone with you...so if he activates it you can use it..that would be stupid on his part!

 

ok you are right in that one case...8260...but usually you can tell what phone service is compatible with a model number.

ive seen plenty of 8260's w/cingular service but no programmable SOC code...

 

Mike, c'mon. Ever heard of cloning? The buyer is asking for the ESN so that he can change the ESN in another TDMA phone and use that TDMA phone as long as he can. In the meantime, the original Nokia phone sits in a box waiting to be shipped to the winner who won't be able to activate that ESN because it has been locked down as a result of illegal activity.

Besides the seller is not interested in running up minutes on his own phone that has been fraudalently activated. The criminal is not going to pay that bill so if both phones work, he doesn't care.



You never know what strangers want your ESN for. Maybe they are cloning, maybe they are selling...whatever. None of us really know how secure the network is, so why take a chance?

Nobody needs to know your ESN to determine if your TDMA phone will be compatible. Tell the buyer that he has to use ATT or nothing (which is probably true anyway). If you just have to give him the ESN, only give him the first 6 digits and the rest are 0000. That will be enough for his "new carrier" to make a determination.

If the buyer wants to check the ESN to determine if the phone is stolen, that's pretty stupid because obviously the seller is not going to email a stolen ESN, so instead of giving 1234567890 which is obviously stolen, he gives 1234567899 which is less like to be stolen. Only give out the ESN to the winner bidder to be checked.

 

i would never give out that info.

 

People still clone phones now adays?? Damm..I remeber back in the mid 90's i knew crazy people who cloned phones 50 bucks got you unlimited minutes from someone's phone for one month or if you were lucky till they found out they were being cloned...since digital..i have never heard of it taking place...

 

It's an old article but it might still be relevent: http://www.wirelessreview.com/ar/wir...ense_security/

I don't think cloning is a major problem since all the bells and whistles go off when the incident occurs and it is generally shut down. But if a thief can go for a few minutes, that's all they need or want. Besides, this guy might not be the cloner. He probably gets ESNs and sells them to somebody else.

These days....you never know. Maybe it is legit. Or maybe he needs an ESN to get a rebate. Or he needs an ESN to throw off the billing and collections dept. Fraud.

 

thats wher you are wrong. a month ago this lady brings in this v60 from ebay she wanted to activate it. tried to activate on acct it came up lost/stolen device. she told us the situation about ebay. she went home and e-mailed the seller and told him the situation.

well anyways the person who sold the lady the v60 bought it from someone else on ebay and made a profit. but the original owner had reported it lost (we can look these things up) and forgot to have the esn taken off the deny list. so it does happen. .

thats a tough call what to do

 

Hehe, no you misunderstood what I was saying. If someone is going to sell a stolen phone on ebay, you can bet they won't be emailing the stolen phone's ESN to the bidder. I guess someone can sell a bad phone without knowing it.

I only suggested that the seller ONLY offer up the correct ESN to the winner bidder and not anyone else. Maybe the seller should call in the ESN himself to be sure he isn't selling a bad phone...but as the seller I wouldn't give out my ESN to anyone except the winner (or a serious bidder).

 

this i agree with