6.16.2009

Blackberry: A Word Regarding PIN and IMEI Clones

Derived from Kaskus - The Largest Indonesian Community

BlackBerry has been so popular nowadays that even refurbished to blackmarket units are sold like hot cakes. Due to its popularity, there are a lot of people trying to take advantage of this situation. Since BlackBerries are sensitive product (especially to RIM and cellular operators) there are 2 keys which you must really pay attention to which is the IMEI number and PIN number. These two are impeccable and neither could be changed to be kept valid.

A lot of sellers, especially blackmarket ones take advantage of used or even trashed BlackBerries and assemble it to re-sell it. Stolen or unregistered units are usually suspended by RIM and to allow users with suspended PINs there is a method called PIN cloning. This is very popular in the market so I advice you to beware of this. There are 2 procedures you must do to confirm this. It is advisable to perform these procedure before purchasing (or at least at a warranty period if the seller allows it)

The first procedure is to go here and check whether your IMEI is registered as the device you are using. At some cases, the IMEI registered is different from your device (for example you are checking your 8310 device IMEI while in the website, it indicated that the IMEI belongs to 8110) if thats the case then bummer! Return it to the seller or trash it since RIM will eventually block your PIN once it does a sweeping. But if it says that it is unknown, then there are 2 possibilities. The first is that it is unregistered or unlisted (since most US cellulars are not registered here). If thats the case then the second procedure only guarantees 50% that RIM won't block your PIN in the future.

The second procedure is to register to your operator (registration of BB service is required to do the procedure). Go to your operator BlackBerry site (usually http://operator.blackberry.com) and register the device by entering PIN and IMEI. If your device is successfully registered and the first procedure matches then your can relax, otherwise if it gives an error such as "Invalid PIN and IMEI format. Please retype your PIN and IMEI. The Information you provided is incorrect" while you are sure that you entered the correct PIN and IMEI then your out of luck. Good luck!

1 comments:

arya said...

thank you for the information is very helpful at all