Kerala Tips

In Kerala, nowadays almost every one has a mobile phone. There are "life time prepaid services" which requires a very small amount to keep a mobile connection with free incoming call support. Hence even school children has got their own mobiles.

Like any other new service, this convenience comes with a lot of problems.  Internet can be used for education and it is no secret a lot malayalees also use it for pornography. The biggest problem with mobiles is the "unsolicited calls".

There are a lot of young men who hunt for girls on mobile. Their modus operandi is pretty simple. They randomly call people till they get a girl. Sometimes they directly get the mobile number when the girl comes to the shop to by a recharge voucher or for e-recharge. Once they get hold of the number, they keep on calling the girl.  According to a friend of mine who is working in a mobile phone company, one in four girls called will fall for the trap!

This problem is also fuelled by free calls offered by most of the mobile service providers. Some provide up to 600 minutes of free calls for a month.

It is quite easy for girls in the age range 15-18 to fall for such traps. They suddenly get a friend who seems to care them. Girls with abusive parents are an easy prey. After a couple of calls, it becomes a love affair and  the guy will request the girl to meet him somewhere. Sometimes this will stop at a casual affair, but in some cases it goes to the extend of the girl running away with the mobile guy!

It is not possible to stop unsolicited calls in most of the mobile phone service providers. One exception is Vodafone which allows you to permanently block numbers. Of course this is only useful if you are intelligent enough to keep these men away!

Here are some tips to handle such unsolicited calls,

1. Never respond to such callers. If you want you can respond only once telling him that you are going to report the number to the police. Of course calling police should be the very last step!

2. There is no use calling up the mobile company. I had once called reliance and they flatly refused to do anything. It is not their problem.

3. In some mobiles you can enable auto forward for certain incoming numbers. Forward it to a guy who likes to take such calls

4. Remember, the guy calling you might know you in person. So there is no point in playing with him or abusing him. It can only make things worse. As I said earlier, never respond to such calls.

5. Never give your mobile number to a stranger. Keep it only in close family circle. For recharging your mobile buy vouchers and refuse to take the e-recharge. The guys at the mobile phone shops are the last ones you can trust!

PS: Check out Vodafone’s call filter facility. This allows you to blacklist a set of numbers and all of them will be blocked. Another useful feature is whitelist which allows you to receive only calls from certain numbers.  If you are planning to buy a mobile for your child, you should enable whitelist and then add only your numbers.  I guess government should make it mandatory for all mobile service providers to support this.

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