25 grand for your old Nokia?!?!

This one made me laugh!

European criminal gangs are paying top euro to get old Nokia 1100 mobile phones according to a report from research firm Ultrascan. A lot of 1100s were made, but the gangs, which specialize in card and on-line banking fraud, are only interested in the ones made in Germany. They claim one recently sold for 25,000 euro.

I wonder how many teenagers in Germany are kicking them selves after chucking one of these Nokia out!

Basically the authorities suspect that hackers can use this specific model to 'clone' any one else's mobile number... The outrageous price is most likely because somehow banking fraud can be commeted when a specific access code is sent by SMS... but they are still not sure.

Something tells me though that if the hackers are that smart surely they could use a computer with some sort of GSM adapter and some cleaver coding to emulate the phone - IDK but that would seem a lot more economical.

edit: a link might help!

[edit on 23/4/2009 by Now_Then]

Wow, I have two of these collecting dust on my shelf. Do you think they'd take American phones?

The part about cloning anyone's number is also very interesting. I'd at least like a general idea how they achieve something like that (for informational purposes only, of course).