Category Archives: IMEI

Top 3 Ways on How to Locate your Lost Phone

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If you have that bad experience of losing your mobile phone, you would be regretting that you have not taken certain precaution and pre-emptive action to make sure you can track your lost phone once it is stolen or gone. However, with the advance mobile tracking technology that we have right now, the possibility to track and recover back your lost phone is now possible.

Here in this article we list out the top 3 ways that you can use to track your lost phone.

Track phone using Google location history

1. TRACK YOUR PHONE USING IMEI NUMBER
IMEI is an acronym that stands for International Mobile Equipment Identity. It is used as a unique identifier to identify mobile phones in particular. IMEI is only unique to the phone device and not to the subscriber of the phone. Similar to a car that have a unique chassis number, each mobile phone in the world will have a unique IMEI number put by the manufacturer of the mobile phone.

GSM network provider used this IMEI number to identify the devices that is connecting to their network. Because of this, the network operator can be contacted and they can assist to either stop your stolen phone from accessing the network as well as tracking your phone. You can read more on how to track phone by using IMEI here.

You can immediately check you phone’s IMEI number by typing *#06# at your keypad and it will show a string of unique 15 numbers. These number represents your IMEI mobile phone number. You can report your lost stolen phone and submit the IMEI number to the network operator for them to either block the phone or track it.

2. TRACK YOUR PHONE USING GOOGLE SERVICES
If you are using a Samsung or any other Android based operating system mobile devices, you can apparently use some of Google services to track your lost phone. One of the simplest way is to track your mobile phone using Android Device Manager. If you have a Gmail account you will already have an access to the Android Device Manager. Make sure to pair your account with your Android based mobile devices.

You can visit the Android Device Manager site here to pair your devices. Another option is the Google Location History. You need to enable your location history and it will track any mobile devices that you have and only you can see it. It can even show you the timeline of your mobile devices and you can track the footprint of the mobile devices wherever it goes.

3. TRACK YOUR PHONE USING SMARTPHONE APPS
One of the fastest way to track your lost phone is by using an app. This app need to be pre-installed in your mobile devices and can be immediately be activated from another mobile or laptop to track your lost phone. It can also remotely lock your phone or erase the phone immediately once you realised your phone is gone or stolen.

Read more on this here on how to track your phone using apps. The iPhone or iPad normally will already have a pre-installed ‘Find iPhone’ app that can track your phone or lock it remotely. You can also read more here on how to track a phone without an app.

So, there you have it. The top 3 ways on how to locate your lost phone. We also provided a short animation video above that briefly explain on these 3 methods for your viewing pleasure.


How to Find Lost Phone

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The usage of mobile phone is expanding rapidly nowadays. Based on emarketer.com, it is estimated that in 2014, the total smartphones users will reach around 4.55 billion users and in 2017 it will reach up to 5.13 billion users. So, with all the smartphones lying around, the rate of lost phone will also increase.

Based on an industry report, the Americans lost their mobile phones to a $30 billion worth of value in 2011 alone. The industry report also mention the higher crime rate of the city, the higher the report of lost phone filed. Another interesting fact is that the places that people usually lost their phone is in public places such as the restaurants and also their workplaces with coffee shops registered the most highest of people losing their phone.

The laidback and relax environment of the coffee shops probably makes people forgot their smartphones perhaps. With the advance of smartphones, the loss of your phone does not just equate with loss of money value but also in terms of information value. In your smartphone now, you will have all your personal details such as your contacts, email list, social media account and also other private confidential such as your credit card info and also bank account. These are sensitive information and can be used wrongfully if it gets to the wrong hands.

So, with all the risk of losing a phone is getting higher, the more the ability to find and track your lost phone becomes a necessity. As the developer of smartphones realizes this, they have already embedded certain applications in their operating software to track your phone once it got lost. For iOS for example, they already have the Find My iPhone that can help track your phone once it is stolen or lost by using the GPS coordination of your smartphone.

It can track real time and in the same time you can remotely erase data in the iPhone for security reasons. Android also have what they called the Android Device Manager which functions as a tracking program for your mobile devices that runs on an Android. However, there is also third party apps that functions as an Android Phone Tracker that can find your phone as well as remotely wipe your data.

However, if you are not using a smartphone, you will not have the access to this sophisticated tracking app. Therefore, tracking your phone will be quite tough. However, your network operator can do the tracking for you by using the triangulation method. Every time your lost phone is connected to the network, the network can detect the nearest cell tower nearby and therefore can pinpoint the location of your phone. The network operator can do this by tracking your SIM card as well as using the IMEI number of your phone.

With the increase features of smartphones nowadays, smartphones has now become integrated to our lifestyle. Therefore it is an important devices that we must learn to protect and keep it close to our belongings. The know-how in retrieving your lost phone will also be an important knowledge as well as more applications will be developed in the future to track and find your lost phone.


IMEI Blacklist Checker

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First of all, what is an IMEI? And what is an IMEI Blacklist? An IMEI is basically the unique number that represents your phone. It has 14 to 15 numbers and you can quickly know your phone unique IMEI number by pressing *#06# on your phone keypad. An IMEI that is blacklisted is basically a phone that was reported lost or stolen. So if your phone IMEI number was blacklisted, this also means that your phone is blacklisted.

A network operator who received the report by its previous owner would put the IMEI number of the phone to a blacklisted database. This IMEI is also called as bad IMEI. So if your phone have a bad IMEI, it is possible that the phone you are currently using might be stolen or was reported lost by its previous owner.

If the phone was reported stolen, the phone will be unusable in most carrier networks even if the SIM card is changed. So, how do you avoid this from happening? First of all, you can always avoid this by not buying stolen phones or not buying a phone from untrustworthy sources. This is because once you bought the phone from unauthorized source, it would be difficult to return your phone once you know that the phone has a bad IMEI.

But, sometimes you could not avoid this and you might be duped by this people and thinking that your phone is a brand new one. The best way is to check the IMEI of the phone quickly and to determine whether it is good or not. Some network operator such as T-Mobile allows you to check the phone’s IMEI at their website. Just go their website and you can simply type the IMEI number of your phone to check whether it is blacklisted or not.

There are also several websites that are offering to check the IMEI is blacklisted or not based on available database from the network carriers. So, make sure your phone does not have a blacklist IMEI before purchase. This would save yourself a lot of headache.