Wait, so at the bottom of the article it says you can switch over to a CMDA (whatever the heck that is...) to avoid this being able to work and then names Verizon as one of the CMDA carriers...

So this means it won't work if you have Verizon?? Arg. I thought this would be really useful and was about one click away from buying one.....

Shucks.

TT

Can you switch carriers?

Here's a better LINK

Doubt it. His cell is paid for by his company. If I tried to switch, that would send up a million red flags... why would I want to switch if his company is paying for a phone via Verizon?

Is there anyway to do this with a Verizon phone?

TT

Apparently it only works w/ phones that have removable SIM cards.

~ Marsh

"Almost" all carriers are on GSM networks now. Without looking, I think Sprint/Nextel might still be on cmda/tdma network. Also almost all carriers/cellphones require SIM cards.

The chip on a SIM card contains memory, the cellphone also contains some memory. This is why you can store names/numbers to either the SIM card or the phone.

As technology progresses, and cellphone become small computers, with more memory, memory card slots, etc, the phones communications (deleted or not) are stored somewhere on the device. Deleting a text or contact only informs the device to make that section of memory available to be utilized in the future, and removes the file title. Recovery software can find it regardless.

Great example... I have a Digital camera, The memory card went bad.. The only way for me to get the camera to recognize I had a memory card inserted was to erase/reformat the memory card. My wife was very upset thinking we had lost 100's of pictures not yet downloaded to the computer.

I downloaded a free recovery software off the net and recovered ALL the photo's that had been "erased". This was possible because we had not re-written new photos over the old deleted one.

The file and folders were deleted, but the data remains.

That make any sense?

In short, with the right tools/software any media that has been deleted can be recovered if it has not been replaced by new data "ones and zeros".

**ADDED** I see Verizon is CDMA based network

-JKT

JKT,

Actually, the GSM carriers in the USA are ATT and T-Mobile and their affiliates including Dobson, NPT and a few others.

Verizon is CDMA as are Sprint and US Cellular and I believe Alltel. Nextel is still IDEN, but they are migrating to CDMA because they need to clear freqs for public safety. Nextel has been using a format similar to a SIM card, but the cards are not actually the same as the standard for SIMs which are based on a worldwide standard.

Nothing precludes all of the carriers using SIM cards except that it is really a GSM standard.

Mark