[rstoyguy]

Since most of the thiefs valuable data-to-be would be lost, I doubt if a geek would hard reset and destroy all the good personal information. The average thief just wanting a phone, I think this is more of their target consumer.
But who knows, their backup software has the ability to overwrite programs in rom when restoring. I bet that whereever they 'hook' into messaging at, they overwrite a file in rom, so it will still work after a hard reset.
Anyone want to hard reset to verify this?

The hard-reset info is burned in and can't be changed...