IoT news of the week for July 6, 2018 – Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis
The IoT could create a black market in stolen sensors and SIMs: This story about a Polish environmental charity that had to pay a $2,700 phone bill after a tracker containing a SIM was stolen in the Sudan struck a nerve. The EcoLogic Group had placed a GPS tracker on a stork to track its migration patterns; it then lost track of the bird over the Sudan. Presumably someone found the tracker, removed the SIM card, and placed the SIM in their own phone, making many hours’ worth of phone calls. I hadn’t thought about stolen SIMs before, but I immediately remembered a conversation I had earlier this year with an IoT expert at Bayer who told me that sensors in fields are a bad idea because even if they aren’t destroyed by the elements, people steal them to resell on the black market. So apparently the IoT is going to have to figure out some safeguards for lost SIMs and sensors if we really want to put these out into the world. (BBC)