Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Uzbekistan plans to introduce responsibility for cloning IMEI codes of mobile devices. Cloning hinders the search for stolen phones. This was reported by the Tashkent city police department.

The Tashkent police department notes that the introduction of a system for registering mobile devices through IMEI has radically changed the approach to uncovering the theft of phones. Currently, the IMEI code provided by the owner of the mobile device is used to find the offender and return the mobile phone to the owner.

However, along with the development of technology, the methods of concealing the traces of a crime are also developing accordingly. That is, now criminals create cloned IMEI codes. A technical procedure for automatically detecting and blocking such cloned IMEI codes has not been introduced.

Cloning is carried out as follows: using special software, the IMEI code is transferred from one mobile device to one or several other mobile devices, as a result of which several mobile devices with the same IMEI code appear on the network.

The Tashkent police department notes that this makes it difficult to track stolen mobile phones and makes it possible to register illegally imported mobile devices into the republic, the police department said.

Currently, there is no administrative or criminal liability for the illegal change of the international identification code of a mobile device. This leads to the fact that people who hide the traces of a crime go unpunished.

In order to exclude such an incidental situation, those responsible are working on a bill to amend the relevant norms.