Securing your smartphone against theft is no small matter. Whether you leave it behind in a cab or at a restaurant, or someone outright steals it, undoing the damage of all that data loss can be a lengthy nightmare. And hey, smartphones aren't cheap!
But there’s no reason to suffer through this. There are plenty of good applications in the Play Store, and probably a couple that come pre-installed on your phone, that make sure your device is properly secured should it grow legs and walk away.
Along with following Google’s security tips, you should look at one of the following services to make sure you can remotely lock, wipe, or seek out the location of your wayward phone.
Android Device Manager is the Google option
Google offers its own solution with Android Device Manager, and like most of its services it works best if you stick close to Google’s ecosystem. It can locate your phone on a map, make it ring, and lock it, or totally wipe it.
Google recently unveiled the ability to type “find my phone” into Google search in order to pull up a map of where your device is located.
You can track down your device by typing into Google, “Where’s my
phone” if you’re using Android Device Manager.
phone” if you’re using Android Device Manager.
If you’re using Chrome and signed in to your Google account, it’s a simple as opening a new tab and typing the magic phrase.
I tried this out recently and ran into one hangup. It asked me to sign in again to my Google account, which required a text message via two-step authentication (I’d recently cleaned out my cookies). If I was actuallymissing my phone, that could induce temporary panic.
You won’t completely be out of luck, as I was able to login to the Android Device Manager site without going through the two-step process. It’s likely just another security layer to keep some random person from Googling the location of your phone if you’ve walked away from your computer.