How to Remotely Disable Your Lost or Stolen Phone-gctid50636

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How to Remotely Disable Your Lost or Stolen Phone

How to Remotely Disable Your Lost or Stolen Phone | PCMag.com

Many of today's most popular  smartphones can be erased from afar if they're misplaced or fall into  the wrong hands. Here's how to do it.

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•                         April 12, 2012
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Our phones are valuable, but they're easily replaced.  The data on them, however, is often much more important. Cell phones  carry all kinds of personal and business information these days, so  preventing them from getting in the wrong hands is key.

 While a stray personal address book won't matter much to an unsavory  type who finds a lost iPhone—they'd much rather just sell the  phone—cached online banking passwords, corporate documents, and VPN  access are better off kept secure. That's why many of today's  smartphones support a mobile kill switch, also called "remote wipe"  capability. Remote wipe lets you or an IT employee remotely erase the  handheld's data in case it's lost or stolen.

 All of the major smartphone platforms have some kind of remote erase  capability. There are several ways of doing it, such as installing apps  on the handset, using a management console on the IT side, or signing up  for a cloud-based service. Here's a rundown of what's out there for  each platform. No matter which smartphone OS you or your employees use,  you're bound to find something that can help put your mind at ease.

 The good news is that the same features that enable the remote  disable can also just be used to find the phone. Most of today's  smartphones have some form of GPS capability. That means you can use the  same tools just to find or locate the lost phone in the first place—and  potentially, depending on who has it, or where it's found, get it back.

 Which brings us to our last point: Though it varies by platform, the  remote wipe solutions listed below—or any for that matter—aren't  fail-safe. If someone finds the phone before the remote wipe  occurs—which could happen if the battery dies, or there's no signal to  receive the command—a thief or corporate spy could disable the network  connections and then hack away. Your best insurance, therefore, is to  disable the handset as quickly as possible, the same way you would call  your credit card company the moment you noticed a credit card was  missing.
 
 Apple iPhone
 Thanks to iCloud,  you can now locate and remotely erase any iPhone. While you still have  the device, head to Settings > iCloud and turn on Find My iPhone if  it isn't already enabled. If you lose your phone, you can find it either  by installing the free Find My iPhone  app on another iOS device, or by visiting icloud.com, signing in, and  using Apple's Web-based Find My iPhone app. With either tool, you can  remotely lock the phone with a passcode if you haven't already, send a  message to it, play a sound, or remotely wipe the phone.
 
 Google Android
 Android Lost  adds remote find and wipe capability, and also lets you set a password  and lock the SIM card slot. You can even sound an alarm when the phone  is on silent—perfect for finding it when it's buried in the couch  cushions. We're particularly fond of Android Lost because you can push  the app to the phone from Google Play (formerly the Android Market)  remotely. In a corporate setting, IT managers deploying Android devices  can enable native remote wipe capability by installing Google Apps Device Policy, though it can't be added retroactively.
 
 Microsoft Windows Phone
 For any Windows Phone 7 or 7.5 device, head to www.windowsphone.com  on a desktop or laptop PC and sign in. Then click My Phone. From here,  you can locate the phone with GPS, erase all the data, lock the phone  and display a message, or change your password. Microsoft also lets you  set the phone itself to save its location every few hours; this helps if  you lose the phone later and the battery dies, since it will have  reported its last known location. To do so, head to Start > App List  > Settings and tap Find My Phone.
 
 RIM BlackBerry OS
 Research In Motion offers BlackBerry Protect,  a free app that lets you find, lock, or wipe your BlackBerry from a  remote location. It also adds daily, weekly, and monthly backup  capability for your data. Any BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) handset  can be erased remotely via the Erase Data and Disable Handheld  IT administration command over the wireless network. IT admins can also  specify if the handset should revert to factory default settings or  retain the IT policy it had before.
 
 For more on protecting your phone, read The Best Mobile Security Apps.