Stolen phones

Nowadays, mobile devices are with us virtually non-stop. For this reason often are exposed to loss or theft. Given the nature and the quantity of data stored in them losing your smartphone or tablet can be for the owner of an irreparable loss. There are, of course, the method of securing valuable for us documents or photos, such as backing up or storing data in the cloud. It is always some consolation, however, these methods do not allow for the recovery of their property or their guard against shoppers buying stolen equipment.

What do you do when you lose your phone?

You should think about this situation before it happens. On the market there are many anti-theft application that can help us regain smartphone.

Installing one of the popular antivirus gives obvious benefits therefore it is worth doing. Most popular of them, such as: Avast Mobile, Kaspersky Mobile Security, AVG Anti-Virus, Norton Mobile Security or F-Secure - Anti-Theft versions are paid and free (with a limited set of functions). Applications are available for all popular mobile platforms.

Most of them, in addition to anti-virus protection has additional features that allow you to remote data deletion, blocking access to unauthorized persons, send information about someone tried to use a foreign SIM card, or to locate device on a map. Some of them also allow you to take pictures that can help you to find your smartphone.

Apple has prepared one of the more interesting and more complex solutions for its customers. The service Find My iPhone helps find and protect your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac in case of loss or theft.

The equivalent of Find My iPhone for users of smartphones running Android is released by Google application Android Device Manager. As with the previously discussed it helps in finding the lost equipment and helps to secure them together with the data recorded therein. The application allows you to:

• Finding Android devices associated with your Google Account
• Reset the PIN screen lock your device
• Erase all data from your phone

After the last update to Android Device Manager is also available as a guest login, so that each user can temporarily log on to any device with an installed app to find your smartphone.

In a situation where not previously installed this type of software, the phone is not responding and all ideas for his recovery failed you should report the theft. We can do this at the nearest police station. Next you should block the IMEI of the device. In order to do (with a certificate issued by the police) contact our operator. After such notification IMEI is placed on the Black List (Phone Black List). Since that time the phone will be useless for the new "owner". The devices from the Black List will not log on to any network operator of country in which it has been blocked. Such notification may also contribute to the recovery of lost property.

How to protect yourself from buying a locked phone?

A lot of companies and private users dealing with trade in used phones use the tools to verify the model based on its IMEI number.

For phones reported on the black list, there are often situations when the phone that works correctly in one country can not log on to the network abroad. Such an unpleasant surprise coming for example during a holiday trip. A separate issue is change the IMEI number (IMEI change is a crime in most countries of the world). There are a lot of phones in which using special tools to change the IMEI. This gives the possibility of fraud.

Tips for Buying:

• Before buying a phone, ask the seller to provide the IMEI / MEID offered phone
• Check the IMEI number matches that model
• Check if your phone is not on the Black List
• In the case of Apple devices check if the Find My iPhone service is enabled

All this information can be obtained using the services available on our website. IMEI.info has probably the world's largest database of IMEI numbers and access to databases of stolen/lost phones from around the world.

Report IMEI as lost/stolen - IMEI.INFO BLACKLIST

The methods described in many cases allow you to avoid buying a stolen phone and related problems later and unpleasant consequences (handling stolen goods!). Do not be fooled, buy only checked and safe mobile phone from a known source.