Please note that this website has a UK government accesskeys system.
An agreement has been struck between the police and the mobile phone industry to close a loophole which sees roughly 100,000 stolen mobile phones being sold to recycling companies every year.
At the moment, 90 per cent of handsets reported stolen in the UK are blocked across all networks within 48 hours of reporting. This makes them useless in the UK to criminals trying to sell them on.
However, blocked phones can still be used abroad and as the recycling industry exports many of the handsets it buys this has created a new market for stolen phones.
To combat this trade in stolen mobile phones, 20 recycling companies have signed up to a new industry code of practice.
Under the new code, companies will check the details of every phone they are offered against the National Mobile Phone Register, a database of all phones reported stolen.
If the handset has been reported as stolen the company will refuse to buy the phone and details of the phone and the person trying to sell it to them will be passed to police to investigate.
The recyclers who have so far signed up to the code are:
For more information about the new code of practice, follow the link below.
Get more from the Directgov newsroom
Facebook
Twitter
Google Buzz
StumbleUpon
Delicious
Reddit
