Lost your mobile phone? Govt’s new portal can help you find it

Union Minister for Communications, Electronics & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday launched a web portal for reporting of stolen mobile phones. The new portal will also help one in tracing back the lost phones. The pilot project has been launched in Maharashtra in collaboration with BSNL.

The government has been working on a project Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR) that connects to the database of IMEIs of all the mobile operators. IMEI is the 15-digit unique number that identifies mobile devices. The CEIR will act as a central system for all telcos to share blacklisted mobile devices so that such phones will not work in another network even if the SIM card in the handset is changed. This would effectively make the phone redundant and curtail the use of counterfeit mobile devices.