Many of us store all sorts of personal information on
our cell phones these days. If your cell phone gets into the wrong hands, you
could become the victim of identity theft. Or worse. If you have an app that
locates a lost or stolen cell phone, you might be tempted to go after the phone
yourself. Bad idea. People have been killed confronting cell phone thieves.
Contact the police and let them handle things.
But there’s something else you can do that won’t put
your life in danger but will protect you from identity theft. Password
protection helps, but there are services that for a price will unlock a locked
phone. So simply relying on your password is not good enough. What you need to
do once you realize your phone is stolen and not simply misplaced is
immediately notify your service provider and ask that your phone be placed on
the BLACKLIST. This will lock the thief out so that he’s unable to accessing
your personal information.
In order to do this, though, you need to give your
service provider a numerical code from your phone. To access this code, dial
*#06# (star, pound, zero, six, pound) on your cell phone. A long number will pop up on your screen. Copy that
number down and store it with your cell phone information so it’s easily
accessible if needed.
Hopefully, you’ll never have to put this plan into
action, but it’s always best to know how to protect yourself, especially in
this day and age of so much identity theft.
3 comments:
Thank you so much! Great information!
Glad you found it useful, Kath.
I've never thought about this, but, yes...this is a very important post. Thanks!
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