Smartphones now allow you to track your phone and erase precious data

By G Kiongo

Nairobi, Kenya: Any news bulletin on any day will make you appreciate that this country’s crime rate is high.

Most thugs readily offload their victims of cash and mobile phones. And why wouldn’t they? They are easy to carry, and in the case of the phone, many of us are willing to pay a pretty penny for our devices, so these unscrupulous fellows know they odds of getting a good deal are high.

The thing is, to many of us, a phone is not just a phone; it is a safe full of precious data, including business and personal emails, family photos, bank details and even money.

Considering the harsh reality of our streets and the fact that the mobile phone has become such an intimate part of our lives, it is becoming increasingly important to protect the device, and more importantly, the data it holds.

If you are oblivious to the potential of the modern-day smartphone, let’s just get it out of the way that these devices are amazing and getting better.

Most smartphones worth their salt come with security software in-built, which can help you recover your phone in the eventuality of a loss, or at least erase your data if recovery efforts fails.

Blackberry and Apple are generally thought to have started this trend with their operating systems, iOS and Blackberry OS, and as such, their offerings seem more mature. However, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows mobile platforms have actually caught up quite well.

SIGNING IN

The common vein in all the solutions offered on these platforms is that you need to set up and sign in to an account on your phone.

For the iPhone platform, it’s in the iCloud account and it includes, among other features, Find My iPhone.

Once you are registered and signed in to the account on your phone, you can instantly find out where your phone is, and even where it has been.

In the event that you lose your phone, you’d just sign in to iCloud.com on a computer and be able to locate it. You can lock your screen remotely, send a message to the phone, track it, or as a last resort, erase the contents. 

Word to the wise, though: if you decide to go ahead and retrieve the phone, at least get the police involved.

Apple has also gone the extra mile and set up an activation lock feature that stops anyone with access to your phone from resetting and erasing the contents on it unless they have your iCloud password.

ERASE DATA

The Android platform also has a similar feature. Its security feature is called the Android Device Manager. This feature is activated by opening the settings app on your phone and choosing, under security, the device manager tab.

In case you lose your phone, you can head on over to  android.com/devicemanager on your computer and, as in an iPhone’s case, either make your phone ring, send it a message, trace and retrieve it, or ultimately erase all the data on it.

Windows and the Blackberry platform also have the same features and they call them Find My Phone and Blackberry Protect, respectively.

These services are found in the settings tabs on both platforms, and their respective retrieval websites are windowsphone.com and blackberry.com/protect.

Aside from all these proprietary offerings, there also exist a myriad of third-party security apps that can be used to track, erase and send messages to your lost phone. Just look through your respective app store and you will be surprised.

So the next time you lose your phone, ignore that sinking feeling you get and start searching. Whether it slipped under the couch cushion or worse, remember you have a first line of recourse.