What happens when your smartphone is lost or stolen? This is one of the most difficult situations you can ever be! (track and trace explained)
How effective is a stolen phone track and trace app using IMEI number?
What can you do when your phone is stolen if you ever want to track and find the phone?
Read this if you ever want to find your stolen phone in Nigeria!
Beyond the cost of purchase of the smartphone, you have every vital information on the phone which includes documents, files, photos from great moments, and most importantly you have your finance applications such as bank apps and other financial records.
Your first concern is usually around protecting your money which can be wiped clean off your bank account if your phone gets into the wrong hands. Finding an immediate help that can assist you to pinpoint the location of the phone at that instant can save you a lot of headaches and financial loses.
I am sure you must have heard a lot of people say that you can use the IMEI, which is the unique number that comes with every smartphone to find the phone? The truth is, this information is wrong IMEI number is just a number, relying on IMEI alone can’t help you track and find a phone.
My promise to you is, if you read this post, you will be able to see how and why the IMEI tracking has not helped many victims of smartphone theft in Nigeria, and most importantly, what can now help you effectively track your phone easily, with no stress that no one else is telling you about until now.
My name is Oludare, I am a cybersecurity expert with more than 4years of experience in Nigeria’s smartphone cybersecurity space. During these years, I have personally seen more than 1000 cases of smartphone theft, many of whom attempted to use IMEI to track their phones which failed eventually.
4 lies people are telling you about IMEI that will never help you
- Once you have your IMEI number, you can easily track your phone! This is a piece of completely wrong information. There was a case of a young lady who lost her new Samsung S10 that cost more than N300,000 at the time of purchase. She went to the police to lodge a formal complaint and also gave them the IMEI number of the smartphone. The officer on duty asked her a simple question ‘What do you want me to do with this number?” This particular officer was very honest with her and took his time to carefully explain why using IMEI alone may not help in her quest.
- In Nigeria, there is no pool of information/data that stores the IMEI number of every smartphone, and as such, there is no way to track the phone when lost; many advanced countries of the world, have this system.
- What we have here is, the IMEI number of every smartphone which was supposed to be unique to each phone, and telecommunication companies such as MTN, Glo, etc, can use it to see the last known location of the phone before the SIM card was removed.
The difficult part in using the IMEI this way is that, you need an official letter from either an assistant Inspector General of Police or a court of law before telcos can release such a piece of vital information because of privacy issues.
How easy do you think getting this documentation is for anyone? If you are ever successful at getting these documents, it will take several months before it is approved which is enough time for the thief to either have swapped the SIM card on the phone or sell off the phone.
This is the only reason why if you look around you or ask people who initially believed that they could use IMEI to find their phone found themselves helpless when the incident eventually happened.
If IMEI doesn’t work? What then can work!
For any tracking of a smartphone to be effective, the best way is to have a technology (mobile Application) on the phone that sends back real-time location data of where the phone is at every given time. I remember about 5 years ago when my smartphone was stolen, I was completely helpless and there was nothing I could do other than moving on and getting a new phone.
All over the world, there are scores of applications like this, again, none of these apps work here in Nigeria because they rely on internet connectivity for them to send location updates of the pone, except one; the Pins Mobile Security.
Developed to block all the loopholes phone thieves used for many years, Pins Mobile Security (PMS) ensures that you can track your phone through your account page whether there is internet connectivity on the phone or not. What makes it easier is, with just the phone number, you can know the exact location of the phone by sending a short SMS with your security code known to you alone and the phone will send a message back to you with the exact location
Conclusion
Now you can see that IMEI alone will never help you find a phone in Nigeria. If all you desire is the possibility of not ever losing your phone again without something that can assist you to track and find it, then you should use the Pins Mobile Security
