Prevent Mobile Loss Jan 10, 2009

Found my love my mobile

As I have mentioned earlier in the post "She broke up with me" my love, my mobile was lost in an auto rickshaw while commuting to office. Thanks to the prayers I & you made I am back again with her :). We did meet again. The breakup didn't last long. Hope it doesn't ever happen again.

The burning question that everybody is asking me now:

How to get lost / stolen mobile back?

When you search the net for lost mobile you will find thousands of links and pages, but very few posts from people who recovered it.

One of the reason I got mobile back is because I was very well prepared that this crisis might occur. Other reasons are chance and luck, which are beyond our control but the following things should be taken care of.

First: When you buy a mobile, keep your bills safe. Don't throw them away. Make sure your Bills are duly stamped and should contain your name, manufacturer name, model name and Product / Serial Number of your mobile. Keep all the manuals warranty etc that come along they are helpful although not for recovery.

Second: Take a note of your IMEI ( International Mobile Equipment Identity ) number. Its usually found printed on the phone under the battery along with the serial number. It is a unique number assigned to each mobile equipment. This number is unique to the device and has no relation to the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) which stores the IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) and hence to sevice provider. It was introduced mainly to control mobile thefts. The logic used for tracking is as follows. Whenever a mobile connects to a GSM networks (IMEI is only for GSM networks) along with the SIM number and other information the mobile also transfers the IMEI number to identify itself as a valid device.
Now when a mobile is stolen or is to be tracked as who is using it, a alert can be placed on the IMEI number. The next time the number comes on the network it is identified as a invalid device and the alert is triggered on it with all the details i.e., the phone number / sim number etc, from where the person's address who is using the SIM etc can be found. A point to note here is that although most of the countries follow this standard and have laws implementing IMEI number for mobile devices, some countries although, like Singapore etc don't have such laws and there are devices without IMEI number. There are even techniques to remove/tamper the IMEI number of mobile equipments. But this techniques are against the law in many countries and require high skill and understanding. Its basically like a hack and proficient people can do it. More on IMEI number here.

Third: Although this wont help you find your mobile but will help you mitigate the loss, get an insurance on it. In many countries getting an insurance is a general practice while buying mobile. If your device is costly why not take it.

Fourth: Try and get a backup of all your data i.e., keep synchronising your device with your laptop or whatever. The activesync on windows mobile takes care of backing up your contacts, calendar appointments, E-mail, Tasks, Notes, Favourites, some files and other media. You can use some other Sync softwares which can keep your storage / memory card in sync. Make an habit of connecting your device to laptop (bluetooth sync is hasselfree).

Fifth: There are software which can be installed on the devices supporting multimedia i.e., having PC connectivity installed with OS as Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm OS etc. There are only a few of these software which I am going to tell you about. These software are again a kind of hack and tampering done to track SIM card change. The logic of this software is simple. There is predefined configurable mobile number stored on your device (like in the mobile registry) which will be notified by a SMS, being sent in the background with the information like the new SIM number and mobile number inserted. Some more sophisticated softwares also insert the GPS coordinates of the mobile when sending the SMS, provided your device had GPS installed on it. So you can find out the person yourself who did this to you. You may find some free software look for them. This point may not be applicable to many of you and I admit its a bit geeky.

Sixth: Take Care Period.

Well I took care of most of the above points but I could not install these software on my device because of the performance tweak I did a few days before losing it. When I was talking about the performance tweak in the last post I was talking about this. The tweak basically was that I had formated my Windows mobile 6.0 and installed windows mobile 6.1 and along with that changed my IPL and SPL ( more of it on someother day if interested get started here). It freed a lot of locked memory on my device. So basically after doing it I did not install these software and the next day the mobile was lost.

Its basically like a stitch in time saves nine. So any precaution that you can take is good. With this all done you might not even lose your mobile. And if you lose it chances are that you will be back with your love as I am.

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So now how to Recover Lost mobile?

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