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Criminals take aim at iPhone

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apple iphone o2
apple iphone o2

apple_iphone_o2.jpgWell, it’s arrived. Some would say that it sprung fully formed from the
loins of Zeus, others say that with it you can call the mythical town
of Brigadoon (the one that only appears for one day in a hundred years) anytime to order pizza, all we know is it’s called the iPhone

The Jesus phone went on sale yesterday in O2 and Carphone Warehouse stores up and down the land as well as the Apple Store and Apple fanboys rejoiced and said lo it was good. However, crooks have been flooding the market with cheap fakes to fool unsuspecting punters.

According to research from Netnames, 70 per cent of auctions featuring the phone were offering unlocked iPhones
(which at the moment is impossible as the O2 versions haven’t been
hacked). Another 62 per cent claimed to have iPhone stock in the
country, but these were in fact cheapChinese knock-offs, known as the CECT P168 (which does look remarkably similar to the iPhone – but of course isn’t).

Also,
many cybersquatters have been buying up domains with iPhone somewhere
in the title and putting adverts for unlocking the iPhones to work on
rival networks.

Jonathan Robinson, chief operating officer for
NetNames, said the sites could be extremely valuable to criminals.

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"The
iPhone launch is one of the biggest product launches of 2007 and has
been just as eagerly anticipated by cybersquatters as it has by
consumers," he said. "Cybersquatters have spent a
great deal of time over the past few months securing as many iPhone and
operator domain name combinations as possible based on speculation
about the launch."

Other experts said that the arrival of the second messiah
iPhone would disrupt the market and probably caused the recent flooding
in East Anglia (okay it didn’t but was pretty coincidental).

"Until now, the big brands in the mobile phone industry have only
really successfully integrated the camera function into mainstream
handsets. Now the iPhone combines a camera, email, web browser and,
most importantly, the iconic iPod," said Tom Dudderidge, CEO of iPhone accessory maker Gear4.

"The mobile phone market recognises Music on the Mobile as a huge
growth opportunity but has yet to truly capitalise on it. The great
strength of the iPhone is not only in Apple’s design and user-friendly
interface, but also its key competitive advantage of seamless
integration with iTunes, the software which currently monopolises the
music download industry."