6 Things You Need to Do In Case Your Phone Is Ever Lost or Stolen

Don't have your serial number written down somewhere? Do that now.

21 March, 2018
6 Things You Need to Do Now In Case Your Phone Is Ever Stolen

It happened in literally the blink of an eye. I had just walked outside my house to go to the theater when I realized I'd left my tickets behind. I turned off the car's ignition, but figured I'd only be gone a minute and didn't need to bother locking the doors. Wrong! In the 60 seconds it took to run into my house and grab my tickets, my purse was snatched out of my car—along with my wallet, credit cards, and phone.

What followed was a frantic half hour of trying to cancel credit cards before the thieves could use them and dealing with the local police, who arrived at my house about 10 minutes after I called. It was easy to cancel the cards, though the robbers had already managed to charge around $300 (INR 20,143 approx.) of subway fares on them by the time I connected with the credit card companies. They'd gotten my very nice brown leather Liz Claiborne hobo bag, too, but that wasn't the end of the world. They also pocketed the cash I had in my wallet, along with my driver's license. I hated to lose the cash, but I worried more about identity theft, since the creeps had my license. But all the license has on it is a picture and my home address, not a social security number, so that was inconvenient, but not terrible.

But there was still my stolen phone to deal with, of course. It was an expensive Samsung smartphone, and while it didn't contain a lot of personal information, it did have access to my Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter accounts, as well as all of my photos and contacts. Plus, I use my phone constantly for work. It would be a nuisance to replace it.

In the course of getting a new phone, here is what I learned. Hopefully my experience will help you in the event your phone is ever stolen, too.

1. Insure your phone.

When I bought my phone, I purchased an insurance policy on it just in case it was stolen, lost, or damaged. The policy only costs me a few dollars a month, which I pay as part of my standard phone bill, and it turned out to be totally worth it.

2. File a police report immediately.

Thieves don't want your phone. They want to sell your phone and make a couple hundred bucks on it. Filing a police report as soon as possible, which should include a physical description of the phone as well as make and serial number, makes it easier for the police to track down your stolen property in a pawnshop, on eBay, or maybe even a bust.

3. Speaking of serial numbers, what's yours?

If you don't have your serial number written down somewhere, do that now. It will come in handy if you need to recover your device.

4. Regularly back up your phone's data and photos.

If you're not backing up your phone's files, contacts, phone numbers, and photos to another storage system, start doing that today. My photos automatically back up to a Google pictures file, so I never need to worry about them, but I did lose all my contacts and had to re-enter them over the next few days. Here's how to back up your iPhone, as well as an iPad and iPod Touch. By the way, if you do have to re-enter your contacts, make it easy: Send an email to your list, explain your situation, and ask them to phone you and leave their name with their message. That way, you can just go into your phone log and save the number and name to your contacts file very efficiently.

5. Know how to locate your phone and lock it remotely.

What I didn't know at the time was that Google could have helped me find my phone. It's an Android, and all I had to do was go to the Google search box, type in "find my phone" and wait. In a matter of seconds, Google would have displayed a map showing me my phone's (almost) exact location. The same process lets you lock your phone and erase the phone's data. If you have an iPhone, make sure you enable the "Find My iPhone" feature. You can also sign in to icloud.com/find, then use Lost Mode to remotely lock your device and keep track of your phone's location.

6. Encrypt everything.

In addition to having a password to get into your phone, make sure access to things like online bank accounts are protected with their own additional passwords. Never leave bank accounts, PayPal, eBay, Netflix, Amazon, or other apps open after you've finished using them. Also make sure to set your phone to revert to password access if it hasn't been used for a couple of minutes. The thieves got my phone, but they shouldn't have been able to get into it without the password.

Of course, the ideal situation is to avoid having your phone stolen in the first place. To foil thieves on buses and subways, put your phone away after you check it for messages—never put it on the seat beside you. Likewise, don't leave your phone on a bar or lunch counter while you're chatting with someone, or even rummaging in your purse to pay your bill (my daughter has had three phones stolen this way, right under her nose). Keep your new phone in an old, beat-up case so it doesn't look like it's worth stealing. At home, don't leave your phone unattended on your porch or in your yard.

Oh, one more thing. Don't leave your phone in your unlocked car—even if it's in your driveway and you'll only be gone for 60 seconds.

Credit: Cosmopolitan
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