OVER 13,500 VIVO SMARTPHONES FOUND RUNNING SAME IMEI [Fraud]

Nowadays in the whole Indian Market was occupied by the Chinese brands. In 2020 Vivo is highly talkable brand after their Launch of IQ smartphones. Vivo has a share of 17% in the Indian smartphone market.

It has been found that smartphone major Vivo has sold 13,000 smartphones with the same IMEI number.

as per Govt rules, no two mobiles can have the same IMEI number. International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) is a unique 15-digit code used to identify smartphones individually. 

13,000 Vivo Smartphones Have Same IMEI Number

Meerut Police has registered a case against Chinese smartphone manufacturers Vivo, for allegedly running around 13,500 phones in the country with same IMEI

According to a report by Hindustan, the lapse came into light when a Sub-inspector got his Vivo handset exchanged from a service centre in Delhi but the IMEI number on the box of the phone was different from the one in the phone, which rose a few eyebrows within the Police department. The then ADG Prashant Kumar afterwards directed the investigation to Prabal Kumar Pankaj (Crime Cell in-charge of Meerut Zone Police) and Cyber Expert Vijay Kumar.

On 16 January 2020, the service centre manager replied that the IMEI number had not been changed. Since the handset had a Jio SIM, the cyber cell sent the said IMEI number to the telecom company and asked for the data.

A report was sent to the police which stated that as of 24 September 2019 from 11 am to 11.30 am, the same IMEI number was running in 13,557 mobiles in different states of the country.

Under the new rules of TRAI, an IMEI cannot be active on more than one mobile number. The cyber cell has admitted that the mobile company is grossly negligent in this matter and is in violation of TRAI rules.

After much debate, the new rules of TRAI came into force. Under this, an IMEI can be given to only one mobile. On August 25, 2017, the department of telecommunications had issued a notification saying that anyone found tampering with IMEI number can face a three-year jail term.

The IMEI number is a unique identification or serial number that all mobile phones and smartphones have. IMEI number can be used to block a mobile phone from being used by another person or phone company if it has been lost or stolen.

IMEI TAMPERING? NOT THE FIRST TIME IN INDIA

Well, this is not the first time we’re hearing about something like this. Back in 2012, a similar incident came to the light where 18,000 phones were running the same IMEI numbers. In 2017, the Indian government made tampering with IMEI a punishable offence with three years’ jail term. A similar case but on a massive scale was found back in November 2019. More than one lakh stolen mobile phones were reported running same IMEI numbers by the police department.