Computer Tricks and Secrets

Your mobile phone has a globally unique number associated with it, called the IMEI number, that uniquely identifies your device within the mobile network. If your phone gets lost or is stolen, you would need to provide this IMEI number to the law enforcement agencies and the telecom operator for them to blacklist your device and prevent anyone else from using your phone on their wireless network. As you probably know, it is relatively easy to find the IMEI number of your mobile phone. While there are apps that will help you retrieve this number with a tap, you don’t really need one. Just open the phone dialer, call *#06# and the IMEI number will be displayed on the phone’s screen. Alternatively, you can open device Settings – About Phone – Status and long-press the IMEI number to copy it to the clipboard. If you have however lost your phone but did not record the IMEI number beforehand, you can still retrieve the number from your Google Account. Just go to google.com/settings , sign-i...

[For non-techie parents who have a computer at home and are worried about their kids safety online.] How Parents Can Block Certain Websites From Children A mother recently wrote saying she is very concerned that her young children are spending too much time on websites like Orkut, MySpace and Facebook. Her worries are not just about children wasting time on the Internet – it’s more about the activities that children are doing on these sites. She is concerned that children could be interacting with complete strangers (or online predators) and even sharing personal information. And with some news reports saying that criminal activities could have been planned on Orkut, the mother has finally made up her mind to restrict access to Orkut and some other websites on the home computer. The only problem is that she has absolutely no clue about how to block websites – parental control software like Net Nanny or Norton Internet Security are pretty good but they cost money. Now before you take th...