4 Ways to Prepare for Smartphone Theft

There’s no way to completely prevent smartphone theft. Someone could slip their hand into your pocket or bag and pull out your phone when you’re not paying attention. Someone could forcibly take it from you. You never know.

While you can’t protect yourself from this frustrating situation, you can at least take some precautions to recover from it. Here are four of them.

1. Emergency Fund

First things first, you want to make sure that you can get yourself a smartphone replacement as soon as possible. You can’t wait around for weeks or months to save up for a new one.

One way to do this is to put together an emergency fund. An emergency fund is a personal collection of savings reserved for urgent, unplanned expenses. Your emergency fund should be able to help you get a reasonable replacement in a short amount of time.

What if you don’t have enough in your emergency fund? If you don’t have enough, you could look into legit online loans through CreditFresh to help you with this problem. If your application for an online loan gets approved, you could use the borrowed funds to get a replacement quickly. After getting the replacement, focus on the steady repayment process.

You should only turn to this solution in emergencies. Don’t use an online loan to get a new smartphone just because you want an upgrade.

2. Password Protection

If your smartphone ever gets stolen, the thief will need to unlock your screen to access your data. So, a strong password is the first barrier they’ll encounter. Make your password difficult to guess. You don’t want it to be “password” or “hello.” They could guess that right away and delve into all of your private information.

If your smartphone offers face unlocking or thumbprint unlocking, you should use those features. A thief won’t be able to replicate these and open your lockscreen.

3. GPS-Tracking

Download a GPS-tracking app like Find My Device or Find My iPhone. These will be able to locate where your device currently is — or at the very least, the last location when it was turned on and connected to mobile data or Wi-Fi.

If you know that your smartphone was stolen, don’t use the GPS tracker to go find it. You should never risk a confrontation over your smartphone. This can be very dangerous. If you want to use the GPS information, notify the police of the phone’s location when filing a police report. It could help them retrieve it and get it back to you.

One of the best features of these GPS-tracking apps is that you can remotely lock your phone, and if you feel like it’s necessary, you can permanently delete the data. This is the last resort that can stop a thief from accessing your personal information. The phone will essentially be wiped clean.

4. Back Up Your Data

Losing your smartphone is a real pain, especially when you don’t back up your data. You could lose important files, photos, messages and other content forever. So, you should back up your smartphone to make sure that you don’t lose all of your data when you lose your device.

Losing your smartphone is a terrible experience. Follow these precautions to make it just a little less terrible.