SMARTPHONE Before
it’s too late
Here are some precautions you can take now in
case you lose your phone in the future
Smartphones
have become prized possessions for all of us. We spend as much as we can afford
on buying these shiny new gadgets once every couple of years. So it’s truly
heartbreaking when it gets lost or stolen. Here are a few steps everybody ought
to take, so in the unfortunate event that your phone goes missing, you at least
have some hope of getting it back.
Keep
note of the IMEI number
IMEI
stands for International Mobile Equipment Identity. As the name suggests, an
IMEI number is uniquely assigned to every mobile phone sold in the world. It is
typically 15 digits long, and can be found behind the box the phone came in.
This number is typically also mentioned on the bill of purchase. Alternatively,
you can dial *#06* on any phone to obtain it.
It
is important that you keep this number noted down somewhere. In case your phone
is lost, you will need to submit it while making a police complaint. If the
police is unable to locate your phone, you can give this IMEI number to your
telecom operator. Using this number, they can block the phone from being used
on their network as well as other networks.
Use
secure authentication
Using
a phone without any kind of authentication means anybody can access your
private contents with ease. The most basic form of authentication is a pin
code, or a pattern lock on Android phones. Be careful while setting up a
pattern lock though; don’t set a pattern that resembles the first letter of
your name, which is easy to figure out. If your phone has a fingerprint
scanner, set that up with a hard-to-guess password or pin as backup.
Lastly,
avoid using the “Smart Lock” feature on Android, which keeps your phone
unlocked at trusted locations or when paired to trusted devices. You’ll be
leaving your phone vulnerable if the theft happens when the phone is “smartly
unlocked”.
Activate
phone tracking
Both
Android and iPhone have real-time location tracking services built into the OS.
Go to “google.com/android/find”
or “icloud.com”
respectively, and log in with your Google account or Apple ID. From the web
interface, you’ll be able to see the last seen location of the device. You can
sound an alarm, lock the device and even remotely erase all content from the
device. But for all these features to work, the phone needs to be connected to
the internet.
Anti-theft
apps
Cerberus
is a popular anti-theft app on the Play Store that goes beyond Google’s
barebone offerings. You can prevent the phone from shutting down when locked,
so the thief can’t just go off the grid. The app silently sends text messages
to numbers you’ve preset upon changing of the SIM card. Cerberus can also
stealthily take screenshots, pictures, and even videos from the front camera to
identify the culprit. Not just that, it can even record audio from the
microphone. You can also trigger all these features by sending a special code
via SMS to your own phone. This app is free to try and the licence costs
roughly Rs 400.
Add
an emergency contact
It
could be that your misplaced phone is found by a good samaritan who wants to
return it. But if your phone is locked, they can’t know who it belongs to
easily. If you try swiping on the lockscreen without using any authentication,
you’ll typically see an “Emergency Call” button. You can select a few contacts
from your phonebook as your emergency contacts. On some Android phones, you can
go to Settings > Users > Emergency Information to fill it in. On Samsung
phones, you’ll need to go to Contacts > Groups > ICE – Emergency
Contacts. On iPhone, open the Health app, tap Medical ID and hit Edit.
By
filling in this information, there’s at least a chance that the person may call
up your close ones to let them know of the misplaced phone.
Bonus
As
they say, opportunity and calamity come without warning. It’s always a good
practice to routinely back up content such as photos, videos, contacts, notes,
etc — basically things that you can’t download or reinstall again. Apps like
Google Photos offer unlimited (but slightly compressed) backup of your media
for free. Both Google and Apple offer built-in mechanisms to backup all data to
their cloud storage. Then there’s the good old way of moving media to a
computer using a USB cable.
Rohan
Naravane
MM 20NOV17
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