Cell phone’s today are no longer an optional in the business world. Being connected in today’s busy life is essential, whether it’s to use your twitter APP for outreach purposes or just to stay on top of your emails and DMs, there is no way to avoid having a cell phone.
That being said, the rate of phone theft is up year after year and something is being done about it.
Percentage of U.S. cell owners lost or stolen in 2012 by age
This statistics above shows the rate of cell phone owners [grouped by age] who have had their phone either lost or stolen in the USA during 2012. To no surprise the youngest group are more likely to have either lost or had their phone stolen. 45 percent of people surveyed aged 18-24 have had this happen to them at some point. Additionally 1 in 5 mobile phone owners age 65 and up have reported having their phone stolen.
A Program to Reduce Phone Thefts
In co-operation with carriers and governments worldwide the International Mobile Equipment Identity number (IMEI) was created as part of a program to prevent cell phone theft. An IMEI is your 15 digit number which identifies your wireless device. By having this unique 15 digit number in a national database and hopefully a global database [still in progress] the objective is to discourage or even prevent thieves from stealing phones. When buying a phone there is many imei check services available online to find out if the phone has been is blacklisted or not. When a cell phone is reported stolen it is blacklisted in this IMEI database making it essentially unusable on most or all network carriers locally and worldwide.