One would assume that when one blacklists a phone, one could take it for granted that the phone is, in fact, blacklisted. Mobile phone networks also like to offer their assurance that when one blacklists a phone, that’s actually what happens. However, this isn’t the case for a BlackBerry user who’s found out this chap is now using it.

So here is how the story goes:

Hey 2oceansVibe,

A friend ‘misplaced’ her phone sometime during the night at Synergy Live music festival. When she got home on Sunday she had the phone blacklisted and thought nothing of it. Then yesterday a contact of hers realised she had a BBM contact that she had never seen before. After doing a little investigation it turns out the PIN was that of the girl who had the phone stolen.

The guy has changed the display name (The name is just a bunch of twirls and characters so nothing usable there) and has been updating his profile pics. So far we have only 2 profile picture changes (attached). The time zone on the phone now also says West Africa (Nigeria maybe). Which in itself it pretty impressive, that in two weeks this phone has travelled across a continent. Blacklisting clearly didn’t seem to do the trick.

When she posted the first pic on Facebook a friend of hers told her that they had caught this guy rooting through bags, and had tackled him to the ground and got security / police to come pick him up, that didn’t seem to have much effect though considering he is happily updating his BBM profile pics with the phone somewhere in West Africa.

Maybe this chap isn’t somewhere in West Africa. Maybe he is somewhere in the Cape Town vicinity and just changed the time zone so that we’d think he’s in West Africa.

Maybe he knows someone, who knows someone, that knows how to unblock a phone?

Hello. Is it me you’re looking for?

Have you seen him? And have you had any similar experiences when you’ve “blacklisted” a phone?

[Thanks, Alasdair M]