What to Do if You’ve Lost Your Cell Phone or If Your Cell Phone is Stolen or Missing - 9,257 Views, 10 Comments
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Every day, dozens of people realize “Oh no, I’ve lost my cell phone!” A lost cell phone or a missing or stolen cell phone can be more than just an inconvience. Particularly these days, with email, text messages, and more on one’s cell phone, losing a cell phone can be a big security issue. Here is a list of things that you should do if you’ve lost your cell phone. 1. Calm down, take a deep breath, and take a few minutes to think about where you last remember having it. Retrace your steps. Often you will find your phone just by taking this time to relax and reflect. 2. Use another phone to call your cell phone so that you can hear it ring. If you don’t have another phone handy, ask a friend to make the call for you. It’s important to do this shortly after you realize that your cell phone is missing, before it runs out of battery. 3. If you don’t find your cell phone after calling it, contact every place you’ve been between the time you last had your cell phone and the time that you realized that your cell phone was lost. It doesn’t matter whether or not you actually used your cell phone there; it may have fallen out of your pocket, or you may have placed it on the table or counter during a meeting or a meal. 4. If you don’t locate your lost cell phone within a few hours, call your cell phone provider and have them turn off all services to your cell phone! This is the most critical step. Be sure to do this. Whether it was lost or stolen, if your cell phone falls into the hands of the wrong person a great deal of your information can be gleaned and used to steal your identity. In addition, it can be used to compromise your friends and colleagues, especially if you have email and text messages on your phone, but even if you don’t. After having them turn off all your services, go into your carrier’s local store, pick up a new cell phone, and have everything restored to your new phone. Depending on what kind of cell phone you have, and who your carrier is, you may be able to have everything restored and back up and running within a matter of minutes. But even if not, the hassle of having to set up a new phone is nothing compared to the hassle of having someone pretend to be you and drain your bank accounts, harrass your friends, post your pictures on the Internet, and more. By the way, there are now programs for some smart phones which will turn your ringer on remotely for you, so that you can try to find your cell phone by calling it even if it was set to mute when you lost it. They do this by having you text a PIN to your cell phone, which tells the phone to set the ringer to high. One such program for the Google G1 phone is PinTail.
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Read more:
» Is Your Cell Phone Transmitting Your Location? Cell Phone Tracking, Location Privacy and e911
» All AT&T, Verizon, and Alltel Analog Cell Phones Will Stop Working after February
» Track Your Lost or Stolen Cell Phone with PinTail!
For additional similar stories check out our archives on Cell Phones
BEFORE you lose your phone, register it on WimpIt dot com
This is strictly a cell phone retrieval website, easy to use, and a great idea. I registered immediately when finding it. There’s much more info on the website.
WIMP is an acronym - Where Is My Phone
Comment by Cory Hoffart — 1/2/2009 @ 7:42 am
WIMPit.com is an interesting idea to register your IMEI number, so that if someone finds your cell phone, they can go to WIMPit.com and look up your IMEI - but *who* would ever *think* to look at the IMEI, and then *how* would they know to go to WIMPit.com to find the owner?
Comment by The Internet Patrol — 1/2/2009 @ 7:51 am
i am soooooooooooooooo lost without my cell phone and im heart broken!!!:(
Comment by niki — 2/19/2009 @ 7:33 am
Hi i m very sade my Mobile N73 Music Edition lost..
please help me IMEI 353546021310284
please help me..
Comment by Muhammad Tariq — 4/19/2009 @ 10:00 pm
Please help me for traking my phone N73 Music Edition please help me IMEI 353546021310284 please..email tariq_repairman at hotmail.com
Comment by Muhammad Tariq — 4/19/2009 @ 10:07 pm
my n 71 has stolen i can i found it
Comment by krishan — 4/24/2009 @ 9:28 am
We bought our son a new iPhone for Christmas, and it was stolen while he was at school. I hope Karma hits whoever stole it.
Comment by mom — 5/3/2009 @ 10:08 am
i had lost my phone yesterday my imei no is 356900-01-144804-1 please lock my phone
Comment by Dev Narayan — 5/11/2009 @ 9:36 pm
dear sir/mam,
my nokia mobile n73 has lost on 30/05/08 in mumbai. my mobile imei no is352916026118209. purchasing date is 02/04/08. i have also lost my luke mobile sim with mobile thats number is 9773513442 … i have also fir in police station. but no any information of my mobie plz help me… plz mail me on my email address nafees.bhai at gmail.com….
Comment by ateek khan — 6/1/2009 @ 8:16 am
pls am michael and my nokia 6630 was stolen .pls can u help destroy it. my imei number is 35567700316.thank u
Comment by michael — 6/21/2009 @ 7:53 am