Ship AIS ID Spoofed?
There is a vessel showing up as currently moored in St Kitts that is reporting my boat's name, MMSI and ships station call sign. My boat is currently in Lantana, FL and is not displayed on the map. I made a panic dash to the boat when I received the "Departure Notice" from Lantana only to find my boat still in her slip. AIS appears to be transmitting and receiving properly. Has some other vessel spoofed my identity, or what might be the problem?
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Ultimately, I traced the problem to the US FCC that reissued the MMSI to my vessel from an expired license (4 years out of date) where the previous vessel was still using the expired MMSI on their unchanged equipment. This expired use of the FCC issued MMSI is illegal per FCC regulations. Fortunately, both vessels were US flagged and the FCC was willing to contact the previous license holder and force them to change the programming in their equipment.
According to the US Coast Guard, this is potentially a safety of life issue, because the MMSI confustion can direct emergency response to the wrong vessel location or impede search and rescue operations. Had both vessels not been US flagged, the FCC would not have intervened, and I would have had to obtain a different MMSI number and go through the expense of having my equipment reprogrammed rather than the offending vessel.
Good luck with your mess. It took months of diligent complaints to finally resolve the matter. I certainly have less confidence in emergency response based on my own MMSI number experiences.
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Hello Johannes,
Thank you for reporting this. I have escalated this case to our technical department for further investigation.
I will inform you as soon as there are any updates on the above.
Dear Mikel,
Glad to know that you have finally resolved the inconvenience related to the duplicate MMSIs.
I remain at your disposal for any needs you may have.
Best regards,
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