Happy New year, I thought my last post on sql server would be my last of 2013 but something just came and with the unfortunate experience, l quickly want to write on some ways to insure your smartphone especially Samsung Galaxy S4 becomes useless when someone stole it or when you lost it. You may also be able to find your phone with the ideas l’m about to talk about. This is my first time of losing a smartphone and as usual l never buy insurance with smartphones so I was totally screwed when my phone was stolen in the shopping mall a week shy away from 2014. It came as the most horrible feeling to end the year knowing that buying a new one will cost me about $500 without contract and my has about a year and half more to end.
Smartphone theft is on the rise so you have to be a little bit ahead of the thieves to make sure they can not steal your hard earned phone and simply put in a new SIM Card and start using it. So what are some of the things you can do to make sure it becomes impossible for thieves to use your phone? Here are some guidelines.
1. Register and Activate the Samsung find my mobile on the galaxy phone: This application is provided free by Samsung for the galaxy phone. It can be used to locate the phone or wipe all data from the phone remotely using the website at http://findmymobile.samsung.com
2. Register a free account with Avast antivirus software and download the mobile security app which helps you against virus and also provides you Anti-theft services. With the anti-theft, you can remotely locate your phone, lock the phone, wipe the data from the phone, send a message to display on the screen, disable usb debugging which will prevent anyone from connecting the phone to the computer and try cracking the password to unlock the screen. Visit http://www.avast.com/en-us/index to download the mobile app or download it at the play store.
3. Password protect your phone. This is the number one thing any smartphone user should have in place. Almost all smartphones has this feature so use it because with a password protected phone, it is a headache for anyone to access any information on the phone without some magical password cracking procedure. It is not easy for normal person to crack a password so that step alone can create a headache for the thief or someone who found it to give up and give back the phone.
4. Create emergency contact on your galaxy s4. The android and galaxy has the emergency option on the locked screen which allows to access specific numbers on the phone without unlocking the screen. This is where you specify numbers that can be reached in case of emergency, so put a number that can be reached so the thief or the founder may call that emergency number and report they found the phone.
So with the above four steps, your phone is really secured but what do you do when the phone is stolen or lost? You have to act fast and go and make use of the services you have installed as quickly as possible to make sure the thief will not be able to crack the password, uninstall the security apps, turn off the gps etc. Then as additional, call the career, in my case l am with AT&T so l reported a stolen phone and have the phone placed on a blocked list and suspended my service on the phone. When a phone is placed on a blocked list, it means even if the thief or founder is able to crack all the security on the phone, they can not use it on any career in the United States. So for your information, next time someone is selling an unlocked phone to you, make sure the phone can be activated on careers in the United States by looking up if they have a good ESN, unless you are not going to use the phone in USA. They are free websites to find if the ESN is clean, example http://swappa.com/esn. A clean ESN means the phone can be activated on careers in the United States.
After doing all above, go ahead and change password for all your applications such as facebook, gmail, twitter, bank account, skype etc because once your phone is stolen you risk access to your information so you have to make sure you change every single password when your phone gets stolen. Also its a good advice to keep your contacts online such as in Google or you can also back it up using the avast app that l talked about. So the next time you get a new phone, if its an android, you can just download your contacts from Google onto your new phone. In my case, l bought a basic phone and l have to manually add the most important contacts to use temporarily to decide a plan to get a new smartphone.
FYI it is illegal for any unlocking service supplier to unlock a phone for a customer who can not prove ownership. Stop stealing and make the world a better place.
Happy new year 2014 !!!
