So...how do I buy a used phone now, and not get burned?

[SunnyD]

Just a quick FYI for anyone that's mentioning XDA as a place to pick up used phones... as of November 19th, XDA will be shutting down the marketplace subforums. Yup, no more buying/selling of phones on XDA. Idiots ruined it.

 

[soccerballtux]

they can't file lost/stolen ESN, since you "legally" own the phone now.

they can't claim that the ESN that you purchased, to "turn in" for 3rd party insurance, will work because at the time, the ESN was clean/free, then activated on your line (so you assume ownership)

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with that being said, i'm curious to see what happens to all the GSM phones now.
ESN (CDMA phones) were always checked before it could be activated.
there are people walking around with stolen GSM AT&T iPhones being used on either AT&T (another account) or T-Mobile. what happens to them, ever since the 11/1/2012 change?

Their phone loses network access.
There's been some posts on HowardForums' StraightTalk forum about this very thing. Dude bought phone on craigslist, put the SIM card in, it worked, paid the guy money, took it home, and the next day it stopped working.
Those bastards only do a poll-based scan not an event-based scan. It would be trivial to have the AT&T network check a simple key-value store database to look up "is this phone stolen/etc"->"yes"->"don't provide access". But they made it poll based on a cycle so you don't know until hours after the fact.

I intend to file an FCC complaint about this and the difficulty it's giving people who legitimately own their phone and just want to sell it.