Tonight, I lost my DroidX.
Most likely at the grocery store. Where the belt case I carry it in was getting loose and likely fell off onto the store floor or parking lot.
I don't keep a screen password on it. It's hard enough to unlock, let alone putting a password on it to make it harder.
It's not in my house or truck, I called it and didn't hear it.
Google Latitude tracked it to the intersection where I was at a light on my way back to the store while my wife looked it up. Highly improbable that it was not outside the truck along the road. More probable that it was tracking my iPhone (despite that Latitude is not installed on it). Especially when it showed my Droid as being back home, AFTER i had stopped at the Verizon store to disable it.
Which leads us to the next stupid thing. Verizon will not remote wipe your android for you unless you have their Insurance plan. Which of course, my work phone does not have.
So, somewhere out there, despite the tracking measures I put in place, somebody has picked up a DroidX with 1001 emails of which one of them might include a system password to something. It also has access to my gmail account, reckon I will need to change that now.
Verizon gave no indication that they put the phone's ID onto a blacklist, so nobody could activate it. And of course none of these providers seem to offer the obvious service of "turn in any cellphones youd find and we'll get them to the owner"
Here's some lessons to ponder with your own phones:
turn on the stupid screen password that will piss you off but prevent dumb bad guys from accessing your phone
turn on a phone tracking tool, preferrably one that enables remote wipe
test the phone tracking tool and make sure it is tracking the correct device*
*use DIFFERENT accounts for each device, so it doesn't get confused about which device you meant if you log into Google twice for instance
In that vein, I recommend buying an iPhone.
Find My Phone and Find My Friends is free.
It can do a remote wipe and you don't need the phone company to do it
I realize Android apparently has this same functionality, but you do NOT get it as unobtrusively free as it is to setup on iPhone.
as a corporate policy, I may mandate that all smart phones have this stuff set up on them. I'm really mad that I lost my phone, and the steps I took to help were basically useless (google latitude seeming to mistrack the wrong device is totally baffling).
Most likely at the grocery store. Where the belt case I carry it in was getting loose and likely fell off onto the store floor or parking lot.
I don't keep a screen password on it. It's hard enough to unlock, let alone putting a password on it to make it harder.
It's not in my house or truck, I called it and didn't hear it.
Google Latitude tracked it to the intersection where I was at a light on my way back to the store while my wife looked it up. Highly improbable that it was not outside the truck along the road. More probable that it was tracking my iPhone (despite that Latitude is not installed on it). Especially when it showed my Droid as being back home, AFTER i had stopped at the Verizon store to disable it.
Which leads us to the next stupid thing. Verizon will not remote wipe your android for you unless you have their Insurance plan. Which of course, my work phone does not have.
So, somewhere out there, despite the tracking measures I put in place, somebody has picked up a DroidX with 1001 emails of which one of them might include a system password to something. It also has access to my gmail account, reckon I will need to change that now.
Verizon gave no indication that they put the phone's ID onto a blacklist, so nobody could activate it. And of course none of these providers seem to offer the obvious service of "turn in any cellphones youd find and we'll get them to the owner"
Here's some lessons to ponder with your own phones:
turn on the stupid screen password that will piss you off but prevent dumb bad guys from accessing your phone
turn on a phone tracking tool, preferrably one that enables remote wipe
test the phone tracking tool and make sure it is tracking the correct device*
*use DIFFERENT accounts for each device, so it doesn't get confused about which device you meant if you log into Google twice for instance
In that vein, I recommend buying an iPhone.
Find My Phone and Find My Friends is free.
It can do a remote wipe and you don't need the phone company to do it
I realize Android apparently has this same functionality, but you do NOT get it as unobtrusively free as it is to setup on iPhone.
as a corporate policy, I may mandate that all smart phones have this stuff set up on them. I'm really mad that I lost my phone, and the steps I took to help were basically useless (google latitude seeming to mistrack the wrong device is totally baffling).
