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Avoid Fraudulent Billing
Limit "roaming": Review which phones have roaming enabled and
limit these as much as practical. Roaming usually defeats the use of
Personal Identification Numbers (PINs). Cloners prefer roaming
phones for this reason and they target airport parking lots, airport
access roads, and rural interstates. Roaming also makes it more
difficult for some cellular carriers to use fraud-detection programs
to monitor an account and shut it down when fraud is detected.
Turn the phone off. Cell phones poll the cellular base
station with the strongest signal every few second. This is how the
system knows which base station to route calls through. However,
this polling exposes the phone to interception and cloning.
Review all bills and report every erroneous call to the
service provider. There are two types of cloning:
• Outright theft of the phone's ESN/MIN is most common. A bill will
reflect hundreds, even thousands of bogus calls.
• The other type of cloning is called tumbling, where a cloned phone
uses a different ESN/MIN for each call. A bill might have only one
bogus call this month, none next month, but three calls the month
after that. The phone has still been cloned and fraud is occurring.
Prefer hands-off vehicle-mounted phones to handhelds. The
boxes used to capture ESN/MIN have a limited range; cloners will
follow an individual they know is using a phone. Recent news reports
reflect the chances of an accident increase substantially if a
driver is operating a vehicle and a cellular phone simultaneously.
Preventing Cellphone Crimes
In Car: When driving or on vehicle avoid holding your
cellphone and exposing it beside the window, you may become a
suitable target in a sudden smash or grab attack. You may utilize
hand-free kits if your cellphone model is equipped with it.
In the Streets: Refrain from talking frequently on streets,
particularly in crowded and unprotected areas. It may be suitable to
go inside a secured place like convenient store, food chain,
restaurant and malls.
Avoid areas at risk or crime spots, it is advisable to switch
it off as ringing may draw the attention of criminal elements.
Where you keep it: Avoid wearing you cellphones where it is
exposed to public view, pockets are most convenient way to keep it.
For bulkier models, bags or available belt pouch are also safe.
Utilizing your Cellphone Security Features
Security Code: Always use and protect your cellphone with
security lock code or PIN number, this may not prevent criminal
attack, but will lessen the damage by not having them access your
personal and restricted data inside your phones.
IMEI: In the event that your phone get stolen, immediately
inform your service provider so that you phone can be blacklisted
and disabled. The 15 digit IMEI is unique to your phone. With this
feature, you will prevent unauthorized used of your phone or
airtime. This is also helpful in tracing the ownership of the unit.
Stolen phones can be traced via Electronic Identity Register and
barred.
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