Losing your phone while you’re on the road can be a frantic experience, as it’s often your lifeline to the world, your map, camera, and communication device all in one sleek little package. With a little bit of foresight and some quick thinking, recovering a lost phone is not only possible but can serve as an essential lesson in preparedness. This article, written by experts from https://haqerra.com/android, will take you through a series of actionable steps to increase your chances of finding your phone, ensuring it doesn’t become a data-security hazard while you’re trying to track it down.
Pre-Travel Preparation: Protecting Your Phone in Advance
Here’s what you can do to protect your phone before you are going traveling in your country or across the world.
Step 1: Enable Find My Device Services
So what to do if you lose your phone? Get yourself a Find My Device service on your phone.
Are you traveling somewhere? Going to the store or to another country? Then, you might want to enable your phone tracking service before you leave your house. This service is available for both Android and iOS devices and helps you track your phone in case you lose it.
If you do lose your phone, you can lock your phone from other devices and erase all your phone data using this service. This is what you should do if you lose your phone. So, no data gets stolen by the thief.
Step 2: Take Note of Your Device’s Serial Number
Take note of your device serial number, which might help the police find your phone if you lose it anywhere. Knowing your phone’s serial number helps you file your police case when you lose your phone.
So remember to learn your phone’s serial number. You can find the serial number on your device box or your device setting.
Immediate Action After You Realize Your Phone is Lost
These are the immediate actions you must take once you realize you have lost your phone.
Step 1: Calmly Retrace Your Steps
Panic can often cloud our judgment. Take a deep breath and try to remember the last time you had your phone in your hand. Often, the memory of how or where you might have lost it will come back to you once you start thinking logically and calmly.
Step 2: Check Common Areas
Retrace your steps to any places you recently visited. Public restrooms, restaurants, or taxi cabs are prime locations for lost phones. If you can remember using your phone in a specific place, check that location first.
Step 3: Be Cognizant of Your Personal Data
So, what to do if you lose your phone? Even if you have lost your phone, the most critical thing is to ensure that no personal information on your phone gets into the wrong hands. Your personal information, like your email accounts or banking details, must be secured first.
How to ensure their security by changing all your email passwords and bank passwords? This will help you prevent unauthorized access to your phone’s sensitive data even if you lost your phone.
Securing your personal data is more important than finding your phone immediately in case you have misplaced your phone.
Remote Tracking and Lockdown
Here’s what to do if you lose your phone immediately.
Step 1: Log into Your Phone’s Tracking Service
Using a computer or a friend’s device, log into the tracking service provided by your phone’s manufacturer. This can usually be done through a web portal using your personal credentials.
You must always have a tracking system on your other devices to locate your missing device. If you are unable to find your phone, then you can do the next step to ensure your data security.
Step 2: Activate “Lock” or “Erase” Features
What to do if you lose your phone or misplaced it? You can start using your tracking service to lock your phone if you are unable to find it. This will prevent anyone from accessing your data.
If you still can’t find your phone, you might want to erase all your phone data using the tracking service. Through these important steps you can prevent your information from getting leaked to unauthorized personnel.
In case someone has actually stolen your phone to cause you harm intentionally, these steps of lock and erase will save you lots of trouble.
Step 3: Notify Local Authorities
Worrying about what to do if you lose your phone? After you have tracked and erased your personal details from your phone, you need to inform the authorities. When you notify your local authorities, they will document your report, and this ensures security for you.
Often, stolen phones get used to commit crimes and scams. So when you file your stolen report, you can be assured that if any illegal activities take place through your phone, you will remain safe because of the stolen report.
If you lose your phone while traveling, then report the local authorities of the place, who can help you file your report. There is another advantage of filing your report is that you might get contacted by authorities if they find your stolen phone.
For your insurance purposes, you must show a police report so your claims can be approved easily.
Step 4: Check Surveillance Footage if Available
Now that you have done the immediate things, you must search for your phone thoroughly. You must check the surveillance camera to see if it’s present in the area where you last saw your phone.
Often, our phones get misplaced by falling into nooks and cranes or in sofa corners, thus getting overlooked. If you do have surveillance cameras, then go through the clips in detail to find your lost phone.
You can also find your culprit or thief if you go through your surveillance, which will help you catch the culprit. Your prediction will also be confirmed when you check through surveillance videos.
Surveillance footage from the area where you lost your phone might provide clues as to who took it. Stores, restaurants, and even public venues often have security cameras.
Step 5: Use Social Media for Help
You’d be surprised how helpful a social media post can be. Many lost items have been recovered thanks to the collective eye of the internet. Mention the location you think you lost it and provide a method of contact while refraining from sharing too much personal information.
Best Practices for Future Prevention
Now that you know what to do if you lose your phone, let’s talk about future prevention methods. What can you do to prevent your phone from getting stolen again? Here are a few options you can trust to keep your data safe even if your phone gets stolen.
Step 1: Invest in a High-Quality Phone Case
You must invest in a sturdy phone case to protect your cell phone from damage. This precaution helps you avoid damaging your phone when you are doing outdoor activities like hiking, running, or cycling. This step can help you avoid sudden drops or accidents that can damage your phone.
Step 2: Get a Device Insurance or Protection Plan
Get yourself phone insurance as soon as you buy your next phone. This will help you save a lot of money. Through insurance, you can get your stolen phone replaced by a new phone at a limited cost.
You will get financial protection through having an insurance plan. This also provides you the peace of mind to travel anywhere carrying your phone.
Step 3: Backup Your Data Regularly
You know technology has advanced a lot, and it does not require you to store your data on your phone. Get your phone cloud services provided by well known companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft.
These cloud services will come in really handy when you need to store your documents, images, or any other data without taking your phone space. Do you know what the best part about these cloud services is? You can recover your data easily and secure your data as well.
Just change your email password if your phone gets stolen and get your data back. Yes. That is simple, and all your phone data is secure with you. No one can access it. Just remember to back all your important data on cloud service regularly.
Final Words of Advice
Mistakes happen. Don’t beat yourself too much for losing your phone. We understand the importance of a phone in today’s world, with essential information saved in our phones for different purposes.
Like your IDs, emails, and banking details, which help you at every turn for any payment or identification purposes, it is still essential to keep your phone secure at all times with added security like phone locks, app locks, and getting a tracker system installed in your phone.
These precautions help you avoid your personal information getting accessed by unknown people who can cause a lot of harm. So, take a second and think about whether your phone has a proper security tracker or, lock screen, or app and erase features. If your phone doesn’t have any added security, you must install it now.
Now that you know what to do if you lose your phone let us know if these steps have helped you secure your personal data.