Town festivals, concerts, crowded beaches… All of this is synonymous with summer, but it is also literally the “August” for thieves who take advantage of carelessness and crowds to commit quick and very effective thefts. And the most frequent victim (and on the rise) is mobile phones. It is therefore not surprising that the police recommend some guidelines to follow in case of theft.
Obviously, this is a theft that, although in terms of economic value, may not be very important, in terms of information, calendar, data, application keys and so on, it is almost vital in these times. That is why it is so important. have some kind of screen lock so that thieves need more time to try to steal the data inside the smartphone.
The second thing is to try to find the phone. Obviously, you will have to ask for a mobile or a computer. It does not matter if the operating system is different from your mobile. Both On iOS as on Android you can access iCloud or Find My Device respectively. Once you have entered your user data (remember to delete the access information from the borrowed mobile afterwards), you will be able to see if it is near you. Maybe you will be lucky. If so, you will have the option to Make Sound, select it and the mobile will will sound at full volumeeven if it is in silent or vibrate mode, for 5 minutes.
If you still can’t locate it, the next step is to block it so they can’t access the phone and make calls or download your passwords or content. Among the options you’ll have on the Find My Device or iCloud page, is the option to lock the terminal. Select and continue with the following steps.
Just in case, Also block the SIM card by calling your operator. Only do this step if you are no longer able to locate the person: blocking the SIM will make it much more difficult to locate them.
The next step, so that you don’t get carried away by the demons, is to erase the contents of your phone. It will still be in the Cloud, but it will not be visible on mobile. This option is also on the same page mentioned previously.
Now comes the trickiest step: you must unlink your phone from all the accounts you have… social networks, messaging apps, games and even banks if you can. In general, all apps have an option to do this. The quickest way is to unlink your Google account (which gives you access to many apps) or your Apple ID. And from there, what you do is you consider more important or urgent: banks, social networks, messagingetc.
Then comes the time to report the incident. First the police and then the bank (if you have linked apps). To do this, You will need the unique device identification code (IMEI) which, if you act with foresight, you should already have it written down somewhere… Although almost nobody does it. To find out what your code is, you can see it on the box that the mobile came in, by calling *#060# from the device or through the Settings menu… but you only have one option if you have been Stolen mobile: call your operatorThe police will ask you for this code to file the report, it is a way of knowing that it is your mobile phone they are looking for.
It won’t take much time if you have quick access to a device and remember your Google or Apple service passwords. Hopefully you won’t have to use it.