Device and Personal Info Security

About lost phones, stolen phones, personal identity, minimizing damage.

This entry will need to be cleaned up and I will never make it perfect, business or technology wise.
It's just info people should know.

here are two apps you should put on your phone, and you would be in better shape. Both free. "Where's My Droid", and "Lookout Security and Antivirus". There is no reason on earth not to do so. You can immediately track it on your computer, get it to take picture of its environment (front or back), scream bloody murder, cut its service without needing customer service. 

Finally y'all need to know that the big four have collaborated on a stolen phone database; registering the EMEI, so if someone tries to activate it on another service, it is flagged to carrier it is being activated on that it was stolen. Your records with your carrier will have the EMEI, but it's a good idea for you to personally record it. No other phone on earth has that EMEI.

I don't quite have all the detail on that database, but I watched the traffic about its implementation two or three years ago; I worked for one of the big four in documentation.,

Go down to the section titled "Theft Protection" on the following page, and read the detail on Lookout. It works! A guy picked up my phone and disappeared into a medical clinic, and I had it scream at him

.https://www.lookout.com/android

About the stolen phone EMEI database, just put the following into google search: "imei stolen phone database" And you get lots of pages all good. You should ensure that Verizon put it into that database.

You need that EMEI and the app, in case it is NOT a good Samaritan. Actually, by putting info that is close to "personal identifiable" on something that might get stolen is getting closer to identity theft. In the reverse method, if you dial up the phone number of the cell phone, and an honest person has it, you are in good shape.

I am very likely to be able to find out who you are and where you live if I have your phone number. Your email may help also. The more they can bring together - facebook too - can be a good start towards starting an account in your name, etc. It does happen.

A lookout" feature I didn't mention is that it will notify you with where it thinks it is just before the battery goes dead.

Find my Phone, as phil bartram said, is a good finder. Seems to be dozens of apps to do vertually the same thing. In fact, Google seems to have built that directly into their system; 

I google-searched "Find My Phone", it asked for my Google login, and within seconds, it mapped to my house. I don't know the full range of features that various of the apps have. I do know that Lookout has a good range of features. 

I just think that the cell phone sellers should make awareness of those things as fore-front as info on how to install the battery, or something that basic.