How to protect mobile data in case of theft or loss

Losing our mobile phone , or even having it stolen from us, is not a dish of good taste for any user. Although, it will be much worse if they can access all our data that we have been collecting on the phone, from the different passwords that we have been saving, to all the images or videos in the smartphone gallery.

It is for this reason that we should always have to be prepared to experience this type of situation. Or, rather, know what adjustments will be necessary to make on the device itself in case we have to go through them. More than anything, because in this way we would make sure to a greater extent that when we lose our phone or it is stolen, no one can access our most private information. Therefore, do not miss each of the configurations that we will show you below.

Lock the panel

One of the first steps that, surely, you have configured as soon as you have turned on the phone for the first time when you take it out of the box will be to adjust some method of unlocking the smartphone screen . It is clear that it is one of the necessary measures so that nobody can enter the phone first, but the truth is that not everyone is a staunch fan of having an unlocking method.

In most of today’s smartphones we will find different ways:

Pattern : draw a simple pattern with your finger, the more complicated it is, the more difficult it will be for other people to access.
PIN : enter at least 4 digits. Longer PINs generally offer better security.
Password : enter at least 4 digits or letters. And is that a secure password is one of the screen lock options that can offer more security.
Facial recognition : depending on the mobile device, you may not have the necessary sensor to perform this function. Although it is one of the most difficult security measures to jump.
Fingerprint sensor : this technology is not present in all smartphones, although it is still another of the options that will give us the best results in case someone tries to unlock our phone, since they will need our fingerprint to access the mobile.

Depending on the mobile device that we have in our possession, we will have all these possibilities. Although, in general, almost all of them will be available on most smartphones. Therefore, we recommend choosing one of them.

Turn on Find device

Devices with the Android operating system have the Find my device tool by default inside them and offer us the possibility of locating them while they are turned on. To activate it, the general path is usually the following:

Open the phone settings.
Touch Security (if this option doesn’t appear, touch Security & location, or Google> Security)> Find my device.
Flip the switch if it’s disabled.

In this case the precision will be maximum and we will be able to see the exact point where it is on the map. When the mobile is off we will have to complicate something more and follow the following steps:

We will have to enter the web to locate Android phones .
Then, access the email account associated with your mobile.
We will see that it marks the last point where the mobile was (for it to work you must enable the location in Settings> Location).

If you have an Apple phone, you should have the Find My iPhone option enabled. To do this, you must follow these steps:

Go to settings> access your Apple ID.
Tap on Find> Find my iPhone.
Activate the option if you have it deactivated. In addition, if you enable the Search Network option, you will have the possibility to find it, even if it does not have an Internet connection or it is turned off. If this last case is the one that has happened to you, you will have to access the web to locate an iPhone .

When you have discovered what number your phone has, we recommend you write it down in a place that you always remember, since, in case of theft or loss, it will be good for you to know the IMEI.

Set the lock screen

When our phone is lost or stolen , we may continue to receive notifications on our smartphone. So it never hurts to configure them in such a way so that the content of what we receive is not visible when we have the panel of the device locked. In this way, we will make sure that no one can get to read this type of information that we have received.

In the case of Android phones, we must follow these steps:

Enter settings.
Access the Notifications section and status bar.
Locate the option to Manage notifications .
Choose Title only (it will tell us which app we have received the alert from) or Show nothing (nothing will appear in the locked panel and we will only see it once we unlock the Android device).

In the case of Apple phones, the story does not change much either, since the options that we will find in the iPhone are similar. To adjust it, we must follow these steps:

Enter the phone settings.
Click on Notifications.
Access the Show previews section> choose the option of If it is unlocked or Never.

Have your IMEI handy

In case you didn’t know yet, the IMEI of the phones is their most important identifier, which would be our ID for us. Therefore, it is the identification number that devices of this type have, and in case we want to report loss or theft , it could be necessary.

Even thanks to knowing this identifier, we can ask our operator to block the terminal. The quickest way to find this number will be the following:

On Android phones: Go to Settings> System> Phone Information> IMEI (or Settings> About Phone> Status> IMEI Information).
Inside an iPhone: go to Settings> General> Information> IMEI .

Make backup copies

The only thing we have to do to start making a backup on the mobile is in the device settings, without the need to install applications or complex processes. Google has tried to make this as easy as possible and with its 15 GB of free space, linked to each Google account, it protects us in the most complete way possible from not losing anything.

Access the mobile settings.
Enter the section called System.
Then go to the Backup section.
Lastly, tap on Create Backup Now.

We can do this whenever we want to manually, although to make the automatic backup on Android we will only have to touch on the top option where it says ‘Backup in Drive’.

And on iPhone? If in your case you have an Apple mobile , the steps will always be the same. Therefore, you must follow this process from your smartphone: