It's called a 'Handy' in Germany. And handy it surely is - so handy in fact that few of us will willingly part company with our mobile phones.
Indeed, in the UK and Ireland, you may have to physically struggle to hold onto it, especially if it is a fancy new smartphone, as various thugs would throttle you for it. Cellphone theft in those parts has reached epidemic proportions, with teenagers a particular target.
So you may be mugged for it. But what about the equally unsavoury prospect that it might be 'cloned' out from under you, and end up in the hands of Hezbollah, as news reports indicate happened to Ted Rogers - CEO of Rogers Communications - in the late 90s? Or you might go on vacation and come back to a bill of monumental proportions after losing track of your Handy.
I spoke with Robert Berner, executive vice-president and chief technology officer at Rogers. He told me that Ted's old analogue car phone was scanned and cloned in the late 90's — a pretty common occurrence back then, as first generation analogue phones had virtually no security built in; calls invariably went out in the clear over the airwaves. Grabbing an analogue signal and the phones' unique identifiers was easy with an inexpensive scanner, some software and an antenna. Back then, it was variously estimated that 80 per cent of drug dealers had a cloned cellphone.
Ted is in good company. His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales, during what was dubbed the 'Camillagate' affair, and his then wife, Princess Diana ('Squidgygate') both had cellphone calls intercepted and taped while they were muttering bizarre nothings to their erstwhile lovers.
So fast-forward to 2006. Should you be concerned about your digital phone being cloned?
Unless you lead a double life as a CIA or CSIS operative, or you routinely negotiate high-tech weapons contracts on behalf of nation states, you probably have more chance of being hit by a bus.
Rogers has operated a fully digital GSM network since 2001. GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) is the most widely used of the three digital wireless telephone technologies (TDMA, GSM, and CDMA). It is effectively the standard in Europe, is used by about one billion users worldwide, and available in 190 countries.
In Canada, on other carrier's networks, it is possible to roam into analogue only areas - some areas in Western Canada, Eastern Quebec and B.C. still have a fair bit of analogue in place. But on Rogers, you are always in digital mode, unless you have an old phone. Less than 1 per cent of Rogers' customers now have analogue handsets. By comparison, around 8 per cent of Telus subscribers nationwide are still on analogue.
Some folk in rural areas - in the U.S. it seems to be mainly seniors - are attached to the old analogue phones, claiming they have better coverage and reception. And some of the original digital phones were not good for people who are hard of hearing; the newer versions are much improved.
So, if you must have an analogue phone, it may be prudent to use a PIN, to switch it off when not in use, and to disable roaming where possible. Read your phone bills carefully, and immediately notify the carrier and the police if the phone is stolen (whether it is a digital or analogue model). It is best to treat your cellphone as a valuable commodity, akin to the way you treat your bankcards.
If you have the choice, and the cloning scare doesn't make you upgrade, what about the warning from the American Cancer Association that analogue phones give off more radiation than digital models? The possibility, however faint, that you may be slowly irradiating yourself with your old clunker may make the shift to digital less of a leap.
It can be reasonably safe to assume that all of the carriers in Canada use sophisticated, albeit by no means perfect, encryption techniques to protect their wireless airwaves. In the GSM world, there is agreement amongst most cryptographers that the possibility that GSM traffic can be intercepted over the air, and in real time, is remote; despite the fact that scientists at the University of California at Berkeley successfully broke the cryptography on a SIM card in 1998.
