Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
Put one over the phone-stealer
For the city's versatile tribe of pickpockets, mobile phones are obviously not part of their favourite shopping list.
Whether urban consumers tend to guard their cell phones more jealously than their wallets or whether the thieving lot have one of their own, one does not know...but the fact is that cell phone thefts do not seem to the in-thing in the circuit.
Veterans of cell phone usage say that you can put one over a potential thief, if not prevent a theft, by resorting to a simple measure.
All one has to do is to identify and store away the cell phone's serial number, which is unique to each handset, rather like a fingerprint.
Just type out star, hash, zero, six and hash (*#06#) on your phone and a 15-digit code will appear on the screen. Jot down this number for the future.
In the eventuality of your cell phone getting stolen, all one has to do is to contact the service provider concerned and spill out the code.
In turn, the service provider would be able to block the particular handset. In effect, what it translates out into is that even if the Sim card of the stolen set is changed, the phone would be useless.
According to the ophthalmologist who provides this tip under the a `Medi Bits' column in the IMA house mag, though it may not help in retrieving the stolen phone set, one would have the satisfaction of knowing that it is of no value in whose hands it ends up in.
If this practice got popular, thieves would realise the futility of picking a cell phone the next time they try out the sleight-of-hand.
By Dinesh Varma M
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Thiruvananthapuram
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