Talk:International Mobile Equipment Identity

List of countries where it is illegal to change the IMEI?
It sounds sensible that any local regulation that restrict changes of personally owned device should be listed here, along with the penalty for such activity. Currently I can confirm that the UK have legal framework to go after user that do change the IMEI. I can not confirm that France has the same thing as the only regulation was about having the network to block the device on any of the national mobile network.


 * -UK: the Law is called the "Mobile Telephones (Re-programming) Act 2002" (source: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/31/contents): 5 years of prison


 * -France: the regulation is the "Code des postes et des communications électroniques" Article L34-3 (see http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCode.do;jsessionid=B6C77698F4194387756F43B5E6597A42.tpdjo16v_1?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070987&dateTexte=20120220) modified by the "LOI n° 2011-267 du 14 mars 2011 d'orientation et de programmation pour la performance de la sécurité intérieure" Article 42 (see http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do;jsessionid=B6C77698F4194387756F43B5E6597A42.tpdjo16v_1?idSectionTA=LEGISCTA000023708761&cidTexte=JORFTEXT000023707312&dateTexte=20120220). I could not see any penalty for user to modify the IMEI, although it has been mentioned in the French media over the last few years.82.41.180.21 (talk) 17:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * "Many countries have acknowledged the use of the IMEI in reducing the effect of mobile phone theft. For example, in the United Kingdom, under the Mobile Telephones (Re-programming) Act, changing the IMEI of a phone, or possessing equipment that can change it, is considered an offence under some circumstance.[3] Such an action is also considered a criminal offence in Latvia."

is this really true? because I own a notebook and a cable to connect to my cell phone. this equipments are capable of changing the IMEI. therefore all the people that own a notebook and a cable should be charged with a criminal ofense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.246.253.206 (talk) 22:51, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Legitimate reasons for changing the IMEI?
On Mediatek based phones the service menu can be used to change the IMEI very easily, it's just a simple AT command? So is everyone in the UK with one of these phones breaking the law, because they are possessing equipment to change it? Also the law in the UK mentions 'mobile wireless communications device', so I guess reprogramming the IMEI on a mains powered 4G router would be legal, because it's not a mobile device then? Of course it is really important that any change to the IMEI does not impair the functionality of the network (e.g. avoiding duplicate numbers, and allowing malfunctioning or out-of-compliance equipment to be barred from the network). Assuming no harm is done to anyone by changing it, should doing so be illegal in the first place?

Also there are very legitimate reasons to change the IMEI - particularly for privacy reasons - to ensure that our fundamental human rights are not being illegally violated by the state (mass surveillance). Also changing the IMEI allows victims of false accusations and certain pernicious forms of domestic violence, where the abuser threatens to make a false allegation to the Police, for the victim remain safe and untraceable when done in combination with using an anonymous SIM card.

In the modern age the smartphone has become the equivalent of a GPS ankle tracker bracelet that everyone has to wear in order to participate in society. Allowing change of IMEI together with SIM card paid by cash nullifies this Orwellian development.

Also, it is ethically justified to employ a mechanism which contributes to putting the entire population under surveillance just to protect against relatively rare mobile phone theft? Imagine someone in the 1960s hearing that 60 years later everyone's movements were being tracked everywhere they would go - that person would be legitimately outraged. The fact that few people are angry nowadays shows just how much the 'frog has boiled'.

Now imagine how they would react if they were then told that attempts to curtail the tracking would be made illegal (as changing the IMEI is).

Note this is written from the point of a UK citizen, where SIM registration is not mandatory. In other countries, there is absolutely no escape from this surveillance other than not carrying a smartphone.

Also, the UK law specifies that it's only illegal to change the IMEI of the device if you are not the manufacturer of the mobile communications device. If you decide to make your own mobile broadband dongle by designing your own PCB and mounting a SIMCom 4G module (which allows IMEI change via an AT command) that can be obtained on AliExpress - I guess that qualifies you as the manufacturer of the device - and thus changing the IMEI would be legal then? Or is SIMCom the real manufacturer - or is that just a component of the dongle you made yourself?

Of course the IMEI is one of multiple serial numbers that the device could have - ideally two different SIMCom modules flash should be dumped and compared to see what changes between them. Of even more concern is a potential baseband processor serial number stored in eFuse ROM, but I'm not sure if it's even possible or not to read it remotely from the cell network. I still didn't consider RF fingerprinting as well... It depends on what level of security you need - most people would just want to avoid mass surveillance and thus don't care about RF fingerprinting, etc... 86.130.94.30 (talk) 19:08, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Luhn algorithm needed?
The Luhn algorithm is adequately documented at its own article. Is there any reason to duplicate it here? If not I'll delete it. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 18:04, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 14 January 2017

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved to International Mobile Equipment Identity (non-admin closure). feminist (talk) 03:05, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

International Mobile Station Equipment Identity → IMEI – The acronym is the common name, and it already redirects here. I can't see anything else which would be commonly referred to as IMEI either. Also, the current title (including "Station") is not mentioned in the article at all. nyuszika7h (talk) 11:56, 14 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Mixed – I agree the current title is wrong. The referenced doc that prompted the move to the current title says "International Mobile station Equipment Identities (IMEI)", in which the caps are used to indicate the acronym; obviously it does not support the current proper-name-like title.  Acronyms, on the other hand, are generally only used when they're very familiar.  Not sure what's best here. Dicklyon (talk) 04:49, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Move to International Mobile Equipment Identity; weak support original proposal as second choice - The proposed title is often used by most sources. Using IMEI may be good for the whole article content. I'm uncertain whether it's a good encyclopedic title, but I won't oppose the acronym. However, the alternative title omits "Station" and is often used. Google the sources, and you get the idea. Or, WP:NCA says that an acronym may be used as a page title at discretion, especially for readers familiar with the subject. --George Ho (talk) 07:43, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Move to International Mobile Equipment Identity, the article's original title. As has been pointed out, the current title is not supportable, but acronyms should be used as titles only when the topic is primarily known only by its acronym, which does not appear to be the case here. Station1 (talk) 18:49, 22 January 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Use of 'whitelist' and 'blacklist' racial stereotyping
The UK cyber-security agency (NCSC) have made a decision to stop using 'whitelist' and 'blacklist' due to racial stereotyping.

They have suggested the use of "allow list" and "deny list" going forward.

Blocklist and Safelist are other commonly used alternatives.

From the article:

"However, there's an issue with the terminology. It only makes sense if you equate white with 'good, permitted, safe' and black with 'bad, dangerous, forbidden'.    There are some obvious problems with this," she added.

and

The issue was also a talking point inside Chromium, the open-source browser engine at the base of Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Brave, and many other modern-day web browsers. Microsoft engineers asked, and Google engineers agreed to stop using the whitelist and blacklist terms.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/uk-ncsc-to-stop-using-whitelist-and-blacklist-due-to-racial-stereotyping/ Paraphrased (talk) 11:27, 14 June 2020 (UTC)


 * There is an element of righting great wrongs here. The fact that the National Cyber Security Centre (United Kingdom) decided to stop using it does not mean that all instances of the word are banned. The term "IMEI blacklist" is still in common use while Wikipedia has a spam blacklist. Maybe there will come a time when this changes, but it isn't helpful to shout "racist" and to remove things without a consensus or against what the sourcing says.-- ♦Ian Ma c  M♦  (talk to me) 09:28, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Thats a good point, so I contacted a few providers of IMEI services today to get their views, this is the first response I've had, will add more here as they arrive:

Blacklist is a widely used industry term that has been in use for too long. We agree it's time for a change; this is something we've discussed internally and are in the process of changing. Thanks, -Ben E Swappa - Customer Service Paraphrased (talk) 18:57, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

The proposed change to IETF language conventions are strongly in favour of this change: https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-knodel-terminology-02.html Paraphrased (talk) 22:46, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

GitHub position: https://developer-tech.com/news/2020/jun/15/github-replace-slavery-terms-master-whitelist/ Paraphrased (talk) 23:41, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Twitter engineers pushed to replace ‘master’ and ‘slave’ programming terms https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/2/21311330/twitter-engineers-master-slave-github-programming-racism Paraphrased (talk) 16:01, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Stack Overflow position: "For these reasons, we believe that continued use of master/slave and blacklist and whitelist terms should be discouraged wherever possible. In that vein, we would like to announce that we have made the following changes on all user-facing portions of the sites:   We can confirm that no instances of master/slave are shown in the UI    All instances of “blacklist” have been converted to “blocklist”    All instances of “whitelist” have been converted to “allowlist”

These changes affect any text showing up in the user interface, in server logs, on mod pages, on dev routes and dev-pages, and we will work to ensure that these terms will no longer be used moving forward for any new feature work. Additionally, from this point forward, we will use the term “blocklists” instead of “blacklists” when handling requests to block tags, words in titles, and usernames from appearing on the site." https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/352702/629190 Paraphrased (talk) 08:36, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

This kind of political correctness is putting me off contributing to Wikipedia and Open Source, especially when people are punished for using 'improper' language. The mass surveillance of the Internet is bad enough already, now we have language policing, with peoples careers being destroyed for making a joke that was offensive. So sad to see what has come of the modern Internet. 86.130.94.30 (talk) 19:13, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Very shady internet businesses at external links
...are offering deals on nonexistent(!) equipment, "pro" subscriptions, etc. And none of them was even able to process that conveniently dash-splitted Alcatel IMEI example from the article. Any libre tools available? 46.242.17.135 (talk) 22:58, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

In 2002?
What was the IMEI's structure in 2002? The article only says that before 2002, the FAC was nonzero, and that the FAC being 00 started in January 1, 2003. Alfa-ketosav (talk) 17:43, 18 November 2023 (UTC)