Most smartphones you can buy
nowadays can seriously burn a hole in your wallet. That’s one of the reasons
why owners of new smartphones treat their device like a fragile baby. Of
course, you also love your phone for its features and hardware.
But as it might happen with all
kinds of small things, your beloved smartphone is constantly exposed to the
risk of being lost or stolen. I know, shocking, but that’s the cold hard truth!
You occasionally lose things and, well, thieves do what they do.
Making your phone crackable and
secure is the best way to prepare yourself for such situations. Of course, it’s
unlikely that you’ll lose your phone, but better be safe than sorry.
Note: If you also own an iPhone or
iPad, there’s also an easy way to track it down, in case you lose it.
Steps
to take so you’re able to recover your misplaced, lost or stolen Android phone
Although there are ways to track your
Android phone ,
being prepared for the worst gives you a great advantage and a high probability
of recovering your baby, mistress or whatever you call your smartphone.
1.
Install an anti-theft app
That is the most obvious step here.
If you want to be able to track a lost phone, install some sort of tracking
app, duh! I highly recommend the anti-theft app cerberus (Play Store link).
It is easy to set up and offers a wide range of features. Besides tracking your
device using your browser, you can lock or wipe it, display a message on the
screen, take images or videos with the front or back camera or start an alarm
sound.
Another great feature is the ability
to hide the cerberus app in your app drawer, so that it can’t be seen by
thieves. Alternatively, you can install a disguised version of cerberus.
In that case, it will appear as “System Framework” in your app drawer. Cerberus
offers even more features but these are the ones you probably need most.
You can try out cerberus one week
for free before having to pay $4. It’s totally worth it! Just compare it to
having to buy a new phone.
In case your phone is rooted,
you can even flash cerberus
into your ROM. It will turn your phone in your own personal NSA fortress. Being
deeply integrated in your system, cerberus is able to survive even a factory
reset.
2.
Install Dropbox and turn on Camera Upload
Having Dropbox’s
Camera Upload option enabled can come in handy in case cerberus isn’t able to
connect to your phone at all. Camera Upload basically uploads every taken
picture to your Dropbox folder. Why is that useful? Because a potential thief might take interesting pictures
with your phone that might help you identifying the person or the phone’s
location.
3.
Set up a lock screen unlock pattern or password
Having an unlock pattern or password
can be quite annoying if you tend to unlock your phone a lot. However, besides
keeping your data safe from other people, it also hinders thieves to check out
your device and uninstalling any anti-theft apps they discover. Also, it makes
it much harder for them to disconnect your phone from your Google account which
is critical if you use tracking tools such as Google’s Android Device Manager.
You can create an unlock pattern in your security settings.
4.
Install a lock screen protection app
Being stuck on your lock screen,
a thief can still do one thing without a problem: turning off your smartphone.
There’s no way to track your phone if it’s turned off! Thankfully you can make
it a little bit more difficult for the thief. Installing an app like Smart Lock screen Protector will block the power menu option so that no one can turn
off or mute your phone.
Although, there’s still the
possibility to turn it off by pressing the power button for a longer time, it
might take a thief a longer time to figure that out. That’s more time for you
to track down your phone.
5.
Write down your phone’s IMEI number
Find out your phone’s IMEI number and write it down. This number can be used to clearly identify
your phone. Also, if you tried everything but weren’t able to track it down,
you can ask your carrier to put the phone on the GSMA IMEI blacklist. This will make your phone useless because it won’t work
with most carriers anymore. And if you, miraculously, retrieve it you can
always take it off the blacklist.
Being
prepared is the first step to getting your phone back
Setting up your phone using the above steps
doesn’t need much time at all and can save you a lot of trouble. I recommend
that you follow these steps as soon as possible. After all, you could lose your
phone later today.
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