Disposable phone wouldn't help in this case. The authorities could leave the skimmer live, keep swiping cards until they got a trace on the person and arrested him via GPS location. Unless the criminal disposed of his phone after a few texts, they could catch him. Considering the cost of these things, which will probably be bought with stolen money to begin with, it wont be much of a pay off.
"A crook dumb enough to have a GPS phone".... Pip don't be so dumb - the phone is a radio transmitter (of a type). the signal from the various cell masts around a cell phone can be used to triangulate (work out) where the phone is located physically and as such where the perp is most likely to be. It's not inch accurate, but it's good enough to narrow down a location fro which to conduct a search.
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Can they trace who the messages are being delivered to?
I don't know, but I hope so. I think they'll be sending messages to an pre-paid cellphone...
For dumb crooks, yes. For smart ones, maybe, but definitely not in time.
I imagine any smart criminal would get a disposable cell phone or use a number other than their personal phone.
Disposable phone wouldn't help in this case. The authorities could leave the skimmer live, keep swiping cards until they got a trace on the person and arrested him via GPS location. Unless the criminal disposed of his phone after a few texts, they could catch him. Considering the cost of these things, which will probably be bought with stolen money to begin with, it wont be much of a pay off.
@Pip
Right, because these criminals are going to be so DUMB as to use a cell phone with GPS on it to receive their SMS messages.
"A crook dumb enough to have a GPS phone".... Pip don't be so dumb - the phone is a radio transmitter (of a type). the signal from the various cell masts around a cell phone can be used to triangulate (work out) where the phone is located physically and as such where the perp is most likely to be. It's not inch accurate, but it's good enough to narrow down a location fro which to conduct a search.