TechTip: Wipe Your Cell Phones Clean Before Disposal

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TechTip: Wipe Your Cell Phones Clean Before Disposal

** This thread discusses the article: TechTip: Wipe Your Cell Phones Clean Before Disposal **
My daughters camera/cell phone was stolen out of her gym locker at school. She told me that she thought she new who stole the phone but couldn't prove it. She told the principle at school and there wasn't anything they could do about it either. We waited a couple of days to see if it would be returned and it wasn't so we contacted our cell phone provider and because we had insurance the phone was replaced that day. The person who stole the phone was harrassing some boys and my daughter was getting nasty calls telling her to stop harrassing these boys. Come to find out the theif was using the phone (which we thought was turned off) by calling these boys collect. My name and her cell number showed up on these peoples caller ID. I was so mad. I went to our cell provieder and told them the situation and they kept telling me that the phone was shut off and could only be used like for 911. I told them thats not true that this theif was calling people with that phone and our information was showing up on caller ID. We ended up changing my daughters Cell phone number but we still got charged for some calls from the other number which I did get reversed, but I was just mad because of all the harassment my daughter and I went through with the stolen phone. We did put her new phone number as "restricted number" so it doesn't show up on caller ID. But then we found out it still shows up on text messages. That is another long story. So I will end it here.

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TechTip: Wipe Your Cell Phones Clean Before Disposal

** This thread discusses the article: TechTip: Wipe Your Cell Phones Clean Before Disposal **
Unfortunately, when anything is stolen it becomes a major headache. Most phones (not all) normally have a feature to lock the phone. Usually you enter a four digit pin number to unlock it. Mine, you have to press a key combination or lock the phone through the menu. This prevents all access to the phone then. This way, if you leave your phone somewhere off your person, then you know no one can use it unless they know the four digit number. It's by no means perfect, but can prevent the sort of problem you experienced with your daughters theft. The problem is not very many people use this feature. I find myself not using it either...guilty as charged. But, you might want to see if the new phone you purchased for your daughter has this feature. If so, I'd advise having her use it, especially if she has to leave her phone somewhere else. It might save you some problems down the road.