Stolen Cell Phones - What You Can Do About Them

Cell phone theft is a booming business. There are many reasons why cell phones are popular with thieves. They are small and easy to take, they can in $ 50 - $ 60 get to be lighter than most of the items for sale, or used by the thief almost indefinitely. Facilitate the efforts of manufacturers to locate stolen handsets will have a positive impact for the future, but now consumers need to beware.

First, consumers need to know that if their phone was stolenin general for all charges incurred prior to reporting the phone is lost or stolen. Secondly, it is important to recognize that, unlike a credit card, most cellular contracts have no liability limits. Simply put, this means that the responsibility of the individual is not limited. So what is a victim of mobile phone theft do?

- To avoid paying for hundreds of dollars they do not make calls, you must notify the victim of her stolen cell phone to the policeimmediately. At the very least they need to know the name of her cellular phone provider, the make and model of their phone, and make the electronic serial number of the phone to a full report to the police.

- At this point the individual is assigned a number that they need to build it to their cellular service provider. The cell phone provider can then blacklist the phone is made and the individual can not be held liable for calls to this point. It isimportant that the records of names, dates and times of each communication, if there be disputes in the future.

- It is also advisable to check the contract as well as to cellular. The agreement often contains exactly what steps should be taken into account in case of theft or loss.

- Although the consumer is responsible for all calls prior to the reporting of losses, in some cases fraudulent calls are covered by credit card of the individual business card if the phone service was establishedup / paid for the use of their credit card. It is therefore recommended in such cases, a call to the credit card company.

- In some example fraudulent accounts are created using the information on the stolen mobile phone received. Additional support in dealing with fraudulent invoices by the FCC () www.fcc.gov available

Another important thing to recognize for the user that the information on the mobile phone is now potentially accessible to the thief. Inthis "information age", it is easy to store all kinds of information about people to bits in a cell phone based. What precautions to take mobile phone users to protect their data?

- It is best to use security features on your phone, to encrypt data and prevent others to access.

- While it is possible to restrict them to overwrite another important step in preventing thieves is to set up passwords for access. ItMost importantly, get a password for access / use the keyboard.

- Another, more radical option is to avoid the storage of personal data on your phone at all. Certainly, most cell phone users prize in the position, addresses and phone numbers, but at least they should consider carefully what information to create the most sensitive and could the devastation when unknown people to gain access to it, and avoid the storage of this information.

TheThe bottom line is owners need to understand the potential damage caused by a loss. With thousands of mobile phone thefts per week, owners need to protect personal information directly at all times and report loss.