Friday, March 20, 2015

What should you do when your mobile phone is lost?





Have you ever lost your mobile phone in your life? I have lost twice and yes it is not a great position to be. But these two incidents had two different implications. When i lost my first phone it was a nokia phone (N71 to be exact) which was quite a smart phone at that time around 2007. Yes i wanted to find the phone but could not the story was over and life went on. But...  Second time i lost a Nexus 4 which is android.

So what is the big deal?

"Oh my gmail account"

When i sensed for the first time that i have lost my mobile phone the first thing that came to my mind was "oh gosh all my accounts are there". But fortunately i have thought about this topic before i lost this phone so the next steps to be done was obvious to me. I think you might be interesting and you may have better suggestions as well. :)

Three important things

1) Android phone has your email account , If you use gmail as the primary account then you might use gmail for most of other online accounts as well. (Facebook , twitter, ebay so on...)

So if anyone can get hold of it then you are doomed, Because anyone can use forgot my username or password reset features to take control of other account.

2) Android phone has all your data :). In this what google does not back up. I think only your life which cannot be backed up restore later.

3) If your phone is not pin protected or not protected with any other mechanism then you are at the highest level of vulnerability.

So what I should do?

1) Change your email address password immediately. This is very crucial and the most important step

You can check login history here. If there is a recent login just after you
https://security.google.com/settings/security/activity?pli=1

2) You should visit https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager. Using this you can erase your mobile phone data (or in other words do a remote wipe out of data).

This will only happen if the device is online.

If you need to locate the device you need to do it before the wipe out using the same above link.

3) You may register a police complaint at last.

Finding the phone is more important. But for someone who needs to protect data, other accounts and also privacy above mentioned steps becomes vital.

If you have other suggestions please do share in comments :)







12 comments:

  1. Recently, experienced this almost. I'd recommend adding a Google alert for your name, so if someone tries to do something using your name at least you might get a notification.

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  2. Yes that is a good suggestion as well :)

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