The elevators must have suffered a lot of SIM card thefts this year. But landlords may have found the solution.
SIM cards aren’t just found in your iPhone 15. They are used by other devices, like elevators, and allow them to make emergency calls, if someone is stuck in them for example. Unfortunately, these are increasingly the target of thieves, which automatically blocks the operation of the cabins. Suffice it to say that a solution should be found quickly!
Depredations on the rise in 2023
A certain number of French cities are having to face a new scourge: the theft of SIM cards from building elevators. Criminals see it as a good way to get a number so they can carry out telephone scams.
A town like Aubervilliers, in Seine-Saint-Denis, has recently been so affected by these thefts that some 4,000 households residing in the area have been immobilized at one time or another. Indeed, in these cities, buildings can rise to around fifteen floors, preventing the most vulnerable from moving.
Still in Aubervilliers, 80 of the 150 elevators under the responsibility of the Public Housing Office (OPH) were attacked. These attacks also have a cost. “ The bills are exorbitant: for a single phone, we had to pay 66,000 euros in one month. In total, the amount paid for these frauds is estimated at 500,000 euros. », Indicates the director of the OPH, Jean-Baptiste Paturet.
From SIM to NTM
So, what to do? Change the type of phone card used, depending on the social landlord. SIM cards are gradually disappearing from elevators (but also from telephones) to make way for so-called NTM cards. These have the particularity of only being able to be used on a single device and of blocking when they are transplanted into a phone other than the one for which they were packaged.
Deploying this phone card switching program takes some time, with each installation requiring approximately 4 hours of work. But according to the OPH, the results would already be felt. “ Theft cases are already starting to decrease ”, it is thus explained.
Source : BFMTV
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