Losing a cell phone can be so upsetting, with all the buy-back programs and information that is stored in your phone. The last thing you want is for someone to find your phone, set it up on their account for their personal use or sell it through one of the many phone buy back programs.
Find iPhone App
If you have an iPhone, there is a must have app called “Find iPhone.” This app will help you locate your phone as long as there is still a battery charge. Once your battery runs out, this app is no longer useful unless someone charges your phone. This is a great reason to always keep a full charge on your phone because this app will locate your device on a map, play a sound to help you find it, remotely erase your personal information, place an activation lock on your phone and much more.
Contact Your Cell Phone Provider
Our cell phone provider is Verizon. If we should lose our phone, Verizon will place a “lost or stolen” hold on our phone which will alert a phone company if someone should try to have this phone activated under their account or should try to sell it through a buy back program. Contacting Verizon if we should lose our phone will also place a hold on all phone charges until the lost phone is recovered or until we assign a new phone to our account.
Retrack Your Steps
Once you’ve protected yourself by contacting your cell phone provider, retrack your steps for that day and hopefully it will show up. It is so easy to leave your cell phone in a shopping cart, gym bag, or even drop it out of your pocket while on the run. This would be a great time to get out an older model cell phone if you have one from the last time you did a cell phone upgrade. You could have the older phone activated until you had enough time to do a full search yourself as well as give your phone provider a chance to recover it should someone bring it to one of their stores.
Once You Find Your Phone
Hopefully your cell phone shows up and you can contact your cell phone provider and activate it again. Our teenage son has lost his phone and we are still looking for it. Once he starts carrying a phone again, I plan on putting a business card inside his cell phone case so that if lost, someone would have my contact information if they were to remove his case. Just think about it, having a password lock on your phone can protect your personal information, but if lost, it keeps someone from calling a number in your contact list in order to help you find your phone.
Have you ever lost your phone? If so, were you able to recover it?