I told you 2 days ago that the stocks of some Apple stores in the UK were emptied to prevent possible store break-ins. The company's employees took all the products displayed in the stores and closed them in the warehouses, but the company seems to have called on the help of the police to protect the stores. A British newspaper stands up that a Sony warehouse was left unprotected and burned to the ground during the riots while Apple stores in the UK were surrounded by police forces. No one from Sony has officially "accused" the police of paying more attention to Apple stores at the expense of other retailers, but the situation is more than unusual. Apple probably asked for the help of the police and they complied and Sony did not do the same because I find it hard to believe that the police would have given "special" assistance to those from Apple.
While London rioters burned a 20,000 square meter Sony warehouse to the ground, reports suggest that UK Police granted special attention to the Oxford Circus Apple Store.
Remaining with the attention also directed towards Great Britain, I inform you that some mobile phone operators I support that certain stores in the country were broken into and quite a few iPhone terminals were stolen. The goods were of course insured, but the operators say that these devices will be completely blocked and will not be able to be used with any operator, the blocking being done based on the IMEI. Theoretically, an iPhone blocked in England should work in Romania, but I recommend you to be careful with them because you might find yourself spending money on an iPhone that does not work in any network, even if decoded.
Once they have examined their stock records, store owners will be able to report the hardwired IMEI numbers for each lost handset which will result in networks adding them to their Equipment Identity Register (EIR), which will stop them working with any SIM within 24 hours .
The networks will in turn add their EIR list to the Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR), a central database of IMEI numbers accessible by all major networks. That will turn off their use on any UK network within 48 hours.
