Last year in August, I was coming home in an autorickshaw when my mother called me to ask about my whereabouts. I lingered on the screen after the call to fiddle with the settings, when suddenly a masked thief on a zooming motorbike snatched my phone. I would’ve snatched harder and threw the phone to the ground If I knew GoEasyRepair was a thing. Sadly, on-site mobile screen repair hadn’t really evolved much then.
I was unable to chase them on a 30-km per hour autorickshaw and had to go home defeated. Still unsatisfied, I decided to do a little detective work myself. Through the Find my Phone feature for Android phones, I was able to track where the phone went in real-time, before it was turned off by the snatchers.
The authorities were cooperative, but not helpful enough. It would have been easier to retrieve my phone if there was a way to track phones despite their SIM being removed.
Thankfully, now there is a solution devised by the government that will help in the real-time detection of lost or stolen smartphones even if their IMEI number is changed or the SIM card is removed. If only it had happened a year back, I wouldn’t have lost my treasured pictures to snatchers.
This tech will be able to uncover all the thieved and lost phones that are operating in India. The creator of this project, Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT), says that it’s application-ready and most likely to be launched in August.
A C-DoT official said, “C-DoT is ready with the technology. The telecom department will approach the minister for its launch after the Parliament session. It should be launched in the next month.” The project could have been unveiled earlier, but it may run into conflict with the Parliament session ending on July 26.
The project, named Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR) by the Department of Telecom (DoT), aims to bring down the black market of counterfeit cellphones. Quashing this illegal trade will prove to be a really hard punch on the face of terrorism, as a lot of cases reported the use of counterfeit and cloned phones.
CEIR will be able to work its magic by storing the IMEIs of all the phones registered to different networks in a database. According to an Office Memorandum released by the Department of Telecommunications, CEIR will be able to detect IMEIs with null and duplicate values. It will be able to expose IMEIs that have not been registered. CEIR will store information, such as device IMEI, IMEI status, date of creation, latest IMEI update, and IMEI status reason.
The Government has pledged Rs 15 crore for CEIR’s setup. Its framework will include server, high-speed connections, databases, and database management software. Moreover, a pilot project will be executed in Maharashtra LSA by BSNL’s IT project Circle (ITPC).
It’s a noteworthy move made by the Government to ramp up the security of phones. For the last 3 years, more than 2.5 lakh phones have been reported stolen or missing; over 200 phones are snatched or pickpocketed daily. CEIR couldn’t have been created at a much better time. It will take a fair amount of work to convince people to report their phones when stolen. Hopefully, by the end of 2020, mobile theft will be down remarkably.
If you’ve been lucky enough to save your phone with noticeable scratches from mobile snatchers and need a screen replacement, give GoEasyRepair a call!
