One Tech Tip: Here's What You Need to Do Before and After Your Phone is Stolen or Lost

Phones hold so much of our digital lives — emails, social media and bank accounts, photos, chat messages and more — that if they ever get stolen or go missing, it can cause major disruption beyond just the loss of a device.
In some places, phone thefts have surged so much it's now an everyday problem, with thieves on electric bikes snatching them out of pedestrians' hands, swiping them off restaurant tables or pickpocketing them on the subway, The Associated Press said.
In Britain, where 200 phones are stolen every day in “snatch thefts,” the government has pledged to crack down on the crime and is meeting with tech companies and device makers to come up with solutions.
Here are steps you can take before and after your phone goes missing:
Basic protections There are things you can do to make it less painful if your phone is stolen. Because some of these features are more technical in nature, people often overlook them.
Lock down as much as you can. At a minimum, require a password or biometric scan to unlock the device. You can also add similar requirements to important individual apps — like your banking account, WhatsApp or Signal — to protect your finance or chats from thieves.
Also, activate the find my device feature, which is available for both iOS and Android. Samsung also offers its own service called SmartThings Find.
You'll probably have lots of precious photos saved on your camera roll. It's a good idea to back them up, along with contacts, calendar items and other files. Google and Apple offer cloud-based backup services, although the free versions have limited storage space. You can also back up your files to an external hard drive, memory card or a laptop.
Some police forces and phone companies advise turning off message previews, which prevents thieves trying to break into your accounts from seeing reset or login codes when the phone is locked. To do this on an iPhone, for example, go to the notifications section of your settings menu, and tap Show Previews.
Turn on newer features Recent iOS and Android updates include a number of new functions designed to make thefts less attractive.
IPhone users can turn on Stolen Device Protection, which makes it a lot harder for phone thieves to access key functions and settings. Many thieves will want to wipe the data off and reset so they can resell it, but with this feature on, they'll need a face or fingerprint scan to do so. Apple also recently updated its “ activation lock ” feature to make it harder for thieves to sell parts from stolen phones.
Android phones, meanwhile, can now use artificial intelligence to detect motion indicating someone snatched it out of your hand and is racing away on foot or a bike, and then lock the screen immediately. And there's a feature called Private Spaces that lets you hide sensitive files on your phone.
Jot down your device number Take note of your phone's serial number, also known as an IMEI number. It can link you to the phone if it does eventually get recovered. Call it up by typing (asterisk)#06# on your phone's keypad. If you’ve already lost your phone you can also find it in other places like the box it came in.
If its stolen If you're unlucky enough to have your phone stolen, notify police. Call your insurance company if you have a policy that covers the device. Inform your phone company so they can freeze your number and issue a replacement sim card or esim. Notify your bank so they can watch out for suspicious transactions.
Tracking your device Try to locate your phone with find my device feature. For iPhones, go to iCloud.com/find from a web browser while Android users should head to www.google.com/android/find. Samsung also has its own service for Galaxy phones.
These services will show your phone's current or last known location on a map, which is also handy if you’ve just lost track of it somewhere in the house. Apple says even if a phone can't connect to the internet or has been turned off, it can use Bluetooth to ping any nearby Apple devices using the same network behind its AirTags tracking devices. Google says newer Pixel phones can be located “for several hours” after they've been turned off using similar technology.
You can get the phone to play a sound, even if it’s on silent. You can also put the phone in lost mode, which locks it and will display a message and contact details on the screen for anyone who finds it. Lost mode on iOS also suspends any Apple Pay cards and passes.
If the device shows up in an unfamiliar location on the map, and you suspect it has been stolen, experts say it's better to notify police rather than trying to get it back yourself.
Cybersecurity company Norton says, “Confronting a thief yourself is not recommended."
Final steps If you can’t find your phone, there are some final steps to take.
Log yourself out of all your accounts that might be accessible on the phone, and then remove it from your list of trusted devices that you use to get multi factor authentication codes — but make sure you can get those codes somewhere else, such as email.
Then, as a last resort, you can erase the phone remotely so that there's no chance of any data falling into the wrong hands. However, take note: Apple says that if the iPhone is offline, the remote erase will only happen the next time it comes back online. But if you find the phone before it gets erased, you can cancel the request.
Google warns that SD memory cards plugged into Android phones might not be remotely erased. And after the phone has been wiped, it won't show up on the Find My Device feature.

Japanese electronics giant Sony is set to celebrate 30 years since it launched the PlayStation console, the little grey box that catapulted the firm into the gaming big league.
PlayStation was Sony's first foray into the world of video games and when it hit the shelves in Japan on December 3, 1994, the company needed to sell one million units to cover its costs, AFP said.
In the end, the gadget became a legend, selling more than 102 million units, helping to launch many of the industry's best-loved franchises and positioning Sony as a heavyweight in a hugely lucrative sector.
"PlayStation changed the history of video games," said Hiroyuki Maeda, a Japanese specialist in video game history.
"It truly transformed everything: hardware, software, distribution and marketing."
One of the keys to its success was broadening the appeal of a pastime that had often been dismissed as a hobby for children.
From the off, the firm was clear that it wanted to trash this image.
In part this stems from Sony's rivalry with Nintendo, which was already a dominant player in the sector by the mid-1990s, but whose games skewed young.
Sony 'humiliated'
The original PlayStation can trace its history to a falling out between the two great Japanese firms.
They had partnered in the late 1980s to develop a version of the Super Nintendo console with an in-built CD player.
But Nintendo suspected Sony were using the project as a way to muscle into the gaming sector and abruptly cancelled the partnership in 1991.
"Sony found itself in a humiliating position," said Maeda, so pushed ahead with the project by itself.
The hardware proved to be revolutionary, CD-ROMs being cheaper and storing much more data than the cartridges used by Nintendo and other consoles.
And to further distinguish itself from Nintendo, Sony courted a young adult audience with fighting games like "Tekken", out-and-out horror with "Resident Evil" and "Silent Hill", and military titles like "Metal Gear Solid".
Its advertising also followed a more grown-up path.
Hollywood auteur David Lynch was drafted in to direct ads for the PS2 launched in 2000 -- conjuring a nightmare vision of floating heads and talking ducks certainly not meant for younger audiences.
"The older audience obviously had better purchasing power than children," said Philippe Dubois, founder of M05, a French association that aims to preserve digital heritage.
The PS2 is still the most successful console in history, having sold more than 160 million units.
'New sensations'
Over the past 30 years, the competition has intensified and the technology has been honed.
While Sega and other rivals have fallen by the wayside, Microsoft has entered the fray with its Xbox, and Nintendo is still on the scene with its Switch console.
But the industry is enduring tough times.
A surge in popularity and investment during the pandemic has subsided and Sony's PlayStation division recently laid off hundreds of workers.
Plenty of analysts are also predicting that cloud gaming will soon render consoles obsolete.
Sony appears undaunted though, recently launching an upgraded version of its PS5 with a marketing push that highlighted new AI features.
Bloomberg has reported that the Japanese firm is also planning a new hand-held version of the PlayStation, which would once again pit it against old rival Nintendo, undisputed king of portable devices.
However, for the purists, few innovations were as great as the original console's ability to handle 3D graphics.
The technology was instrumental for the appeal of classic games such as "Tomb Raider" and "Final Fantasy VII".
"We discovered sensations, emotions that we hadn't experienced with earlier consoles," said French YouTuber and PlayStation enthusiast Cyril 2.0.
He said he had collected almost every title released for the PlayStation in Europe -- some 1,400 -- and insisted the formula for success was not complicated.
"For consoles, games are still the most important thing," he said.

One Tech Tip: Here's What You Need to Do Before and After Your Phone is Stolen or Lost