If you joined us for last week’s Finish Line Blog post (if you missed it click here), you learned about five useful apps for your smart phone. Hopefully we provided a little bit of guidance to help make your phone just a little bit smarter and personalized to your lifestyle. Now that things are just the way you want them, it’s hard to imagine anything worse than losing your cell phone. Actually, we should expand that to losing your device since this post applies to tablets like your iPad as well. Let’s face it, it’s easy to misplace your phone! I can’t tell you how many times mine has ended up between the cushions on the couch. My wife is forever losing hers, and the worst part is she always has it on silent so you can’t even call it to track it down! If this sounds like a day in your house, fear not, because there are services out there that can help, even if your device is stolen. Today we’ll take a look at Find My iPhone and Lookout.
If you own an iPhone, iPad, iPod, Touch or Mac, take a trip to the App Store right now and download the Find My iPhone app. The app is free, and will allow you to use any iOS device (any Apple product) to find your missing device. To get it, download and install the app, then open it up and sign in with your Apple ID. Make sure that Find My iPhone is enabled in your iCloud settings and you’re good to go. To check this, go to “Settings” then “iCloud” then scroll down until you see “Find My iPhone” and make sure it says “On”. If it doesn’t, tap “Off” then tap the switch until it toggles to green. With Find My iPhone activated and ready to go, the app will display your device on a map showing its current location, or play a loud sound for two minutes to help you locate it. If you think it’s been stolen and gone for good, you have options. You can lock your device remotely which would require the person who finds it to know the four digit passcode to use it, or even completely erase the device so no one can access any personal information. Find My iPhone is a valuable tool.
If you have an Android, don’t worry, you won’t be left out in the cold. Head to Google Play and download and install the Lookout app. The free version of Lookout has many of the same features as Find My iPhone. One difference between the two is that Lookout uses “Predictive Security” which means it scans your apps to see which ones access your personal data to try and prevent problems before they start. It will tell you which ones access your contacts, monitor your location, access your text messages, etc. which is a nice feature. Another addition is it will back up your contacts as well as your data for transfer them to a new phone. Where Lookout is lacking is you cannot erase the phone’s contents without purchasing the Premium version as you could with Find My iPhone. The Premium version will run you $3 a month. The plus side of that is there are additional features such as Privacy Advisor, theft alerts, photo backup, and call history backup. The choice is yours as to which version you’d prefer. Incidentally, Lookout is compatible with Apple devices as well and can be found in the App Store.
There’s no worse feeling than discovering that something valuable to you is missing. Our technological devices are certainly valuable, both in purchase price and our personal security due to the type and depth of information they possess. The good news is that through technology there are ways to get these things back. There are other apps and services available to you to retrieve your device, so don’t feel as though you need to use either Find My iPhone or Lookout – these are arguably the two most popular ones. The important thing is you’ve included such a service on your device for your own personal protection and to help ensure that should the worst happen the search will be over!