Our mobile handset is our extended arm, which does nearly everything for us- from handling our bank details, accounts, payments, photographs, gaming and calling of course. No doubt this is the very important gadget one owns in today’s time. One can certainly step out of the house without a bag or wallet, but certainly, they cannot step out without their smartphones.
Being such an essential part of one’s life, what if your smartphone gets stolen?
Many of you might buy a new mobile phone after the device is lost or stolen, but do you know that any person can misuse your lost device in several ways? They might use your phone to do anything illegal, which might be troublesome and could even drag you to court.
In such a situation, one must always report a complaint to the nearby police station for the lost device, and then one must disable the device. Also, if any person changes the SIM and tries to use the same, if you have made the complaint, and disabled your device, then no service will work on the device.
But, the second question is- how to track your stolen device?
For this, the government has come up with a new app called Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR).
CEIR has been developed by the Department of Telecommunications to curtail the counterfeit mobile phone market. Now if you are thinking of why this app is important for you to download, then you must know that it is related to your mobile data which you have.
If in case your data or the phone which is registered by your name gets lost or stolen, it might cause some trouble for you. Therefore, this website will let you register a complaint and track your handset.
The most important feature of this app is that it helps you block your handset’s access, even if the SIM is changed in the handset, claims DoT.
Note: The most important thing is, that you need to file a police complaint and must have a complaint number if your handset is stolen.
How to use CEIR?
If you have lost your handset, then do the following:
- You need to use the block option on the CEIR website.
- Once you select the block option, the site redirects you to a form which will ask for your mobile number, model, IMEI number and other relevant details of your handset which could be used for tracking the device.
- You must have your police complaint number as you will have to submit the same with the form. You will get the complaint number while registering an FIR.
What should you do if you get your phone back?
- Click on the unblock option on the app or the website
- Now submit the Request ID and other relevant details
- By this, you could unblock and have the access to your recovered smartphone.
- Also, the CEIR website has a 'Check request status' option where you could see the status of your stolen smartphone.
Basic practices if you buy a second-hand phone?
If you have bought a second-hand smartphone then you can check whether the device is stolen or not by following these two solutions.
- You can send a message by saying KYM followed by IMEI number to 14422.
- If the smartphone is genuine, you will get an SMS with the information of the related handset.
- But if you get a revert from stating ‘blacklisted’ then you must not use it as the device would be stolen.
- As an alternate, you could also download the KYM app which is available on Google Play and Apple Store and could help you track more information.
How to find the IMEI number of the smartphone?
- It is easy. You have to open the settings and check about the phone.
- If this is not helping, then dial *#06#
- If you have the smartphone’s box, then the IMEI number is also available on it
- Also, you could save the phone’s IMEI number on the backup files on cloud storage, google drive, or a hard drive, for any emergency.
