Our mobile phone, laptop, and now tablets have so much of our personal data on them. Surely the thought of losing these devices must’ve crossed your mind. In such an unfortunate situation you’ll most likely think of whether you can find your lost/stolen device. Is there a way to install a software equivalent of a lojack on your device? And if all else fails is there a way to remotely wipe at least your sensitive data? Sometimes as a last resort wiping your data is the only way to protect it from falling into the wrong hands. In the tips below we’ll discuss the various options available.
For the Droids
An application called Android Lost is your ray of hope when this unfortunate calamity occurs. Install it from the Android Market (now Google Play) and you’ll be able to control your phone from www.androidlost.com . The app allows you to remotely perform various tasks such as locate your phone via GPS, forward calls, lock the device, and erase data. All you have to do is configure your phone with the service and it will show up on the website for your bidding.
Remote wipe your laptop
The most popular free application to help you find, recover, and remotely erase the data on your laptop is Prey. It’s OpenSource, lightweight and cross platform with versions for Mac, Windows and Ubuntu. The software sits in the background and allows you to perform many tasks remotely. These include gathering info on the device’s location, hardware and network status, and trigger specific actions on it such as a remote wiping passwords. You can download Prey from http://preyproject.com/download or find a suitable version for your system on the Omega DVD.