TecQ is our weekly round up of the technology stories.
1. Lost Your Mobile Phone? Now You Can Report & Block the SIM Card
There is good news for people who are paranoid about losing or having their mobile phone stolen. Now if your phone is lost or stolen anywhere, the Indian government will help you find it.
For this, Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s Information and Technology Minister, last week launched a web portal at an event in Mumbai.
This portal will help in detecting a stolen phone or lost phone. For this, the Department of Second Communications has started the Central Equipment Identity Register (CEIR) project.
This project has been prepared to block stolen or lost phones on all mobile networks. We already know that every mobile has a unique number for its identity, termed as IMEI number. However, some of you may not be aware that this number can be changed by IMEI number cloning.
Read the story here.
3. Beware of SIM-Jacking: Losing Access to Your Phone is an SMS Away
You get a ping on your phone, which is for an SMS that has the one-time password (OTP) to verify an online payment. Till now, experts have claimed that SMSes are hack-proof because they’re not on the internet.
However, it seems hackers have a found a way around it as well, and it’s called SIM-jacking. It’s similar to how hijacking works, except in this case, a person loses control of his/her phone.
The trouble is, they don’t even realise when this happens.
Read here to know everything about SIM-jacking – the latest form of digital attack – and what you can do to safeguard yourself from it.
4. Google Brings Voice Assistant to People Without Internet in India
Google wants to connect everyone to its Assistant ecosystem, even those who do not get the internet in their area.
On Thursday, at a Google for India event, the search giant announced that in partnership with Vodafone Idea Limited, it is bringing its voice assistant to 2G feature phones, and also those stuck in network-less regions.
This is unique in many ways, as Google is allowing people without a Google ID to use one of its voice-centric services, to check for weather, seek answers for basic queries and even check if a shop in their area is open or not.
Having said that, the feature to use Assistant is limited to Vodafone Idea users for now, though Google will most likely open this support for other network users in the coming years. Also, the support is only available for English and Hindi for now, with others to be added at a later date.
Read the story here.
5. Sony’s Mid-Range Wireless Headphone: More Bass For Your Buck
The Sony WH-XB900N is an affordable version of the Sony WH-1000XM3. Say what? Yeah, if you hate such complicated names, blame Sony for the weird nomenclature of their noise-cancelling range of headphones.
Well, it’s not exactly affordable, but for Rs 16,990, the Sony WH-XB900N is a wireless headphone that costs half of what its expensive brother, the WH-1000XM3, does.
The XB900N has a similar design and ready-to-use bass on offer and considering how much Indian listeners like bass in their music, this could be a match made in heaven.
Which is why we were intrigued to see if Sony has managed to pack enough ammunition into the latest addition to its WH series. Read the review here.
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