What to do if your Samsung Phone is lost or stolen

Most of us have lost our phones or had them stolen from us at one point or another. Phones are an expensive luxury item and the higher end phones could be worth a lot of money but what could be worth more than the device itself is the information on the device. Our entire world is stored on our phones including cherished photos and videos, passwords, bank account information, personally identifiable information, in a nut shell pretty much everything. None of us intend to lose our phones or have them stolen but if you are well prepared before an event like this occurs and you know what actions to take after, the biggest hit you’re going to take is the price of your phone. And believe me when I say it could be so much worse if you’re not prepared.

Steps To Take Before Your Samsung Phone Is Lost Or Stolen

Set Up A Lock Screen Passcode And Face ID Or Fingerprint

First you want to, set up a passcode, password, or pattern on your Samsung Device and set up Biometric security such as Face ID, Fingerprint, or a Retina Scanner. I know that constantly putting in your code every time you want to get into your phone can be annoying but I promise you the risk of not having one is greater than the inconvenience of typing in your passcode and if you do set up face id and/or a fingerprint on your phone it negates the hassle of typing in your passcode and you could set up Samsung Pass which will allow you to use biometrics for passwords as well.

I understand that some people don’t trust Face ID and Fingerprint biometrics on phones but Samsungs technology is pretty good. I personally prefer to use Fingerprints on Samsung over their Face ID because the on screen fingerprint scanner uses ultra sound type technology that will read your fingerprint regardless of whether your fingers are dirty or wet or otherwise illegible. You can still use Face ID if you’d like and it is secure but fingerprints on Samsung is the way to go.

Never Forget Your Email And Samsung Account Passwords

This one is super important. Well, all these tips are important but this one will make your entire life easier in so many other circumstances. I highly recommend you write down both your email password and your Samsung Account password somewhere safe and DO NOT keep it in your phone. If it’s in your phone and you don’t have your phone it defeats the entire purpose. How are you gonna recover anything from your stolen phone if the password you need to do it is on your stolen phone? You can’t.

Most people use their gmail, yahoo, etc. as their Samsung Account email. Ideally having a Gmail works the best especially if you don’t already have an email.

You will need your Samsung Account an email passwords for a variety of things if you lose your phone or it’s stolen.

A great option for password management is Nord Pass. If anything we’re to happen to your phone you could still access your passwords on Nord pass from another device and it’s a great way to keep your personal information safe and secure in the event that something does happen.

Keep Your Information Backed Up to A Cloud Service

It is highly recommended that you use some type of cloud storage. Some good ones are:

• Samsung Cloud
• Google Drive

There’s a lot more cloud services out there but these are usually pretty accessible without having to download anything extra on Samsung Devices.

If your phone is lost, stolen, or damaged and you don’t use cloud storage and everything is stored on your phones internal storage then you will not be able to recover any of your information. This means that all of your pictures, videos, notes, passwords you shouldn’t be storing in your phone, contacts etc. will be lost an irrecoverable.

Now, when you do purchase storage through wherever you choose, you want to make sure it’s backed up. If you are using the Samsung Cloud or Google Drive you can go to Accounts & Backup and back up your information at anytime. Samsung Cloud will back up pretty much everything except photos and videos. For that you may want to use Google One. You will get 15GB of storage for free but I recommend you buy as much storage as you have data. For example, If you have 80GB of photos and videos get the 100GB plan if you need more then purchase more. It’s 100% worth it.

Use An ESIM Instead Of A Physical SIM Card

Most of the newer phones will be compatible with an electronic sim (ESIM) after the S20 Model.

The reason an ESIM is safer than a physical SIM is because you can take a physical SIM card out of a phone that is locked and put it in another phone. If someone has access to your phone number then they could attempt to change passwords to your social media accounts, banking accounts, email etc. With an ESIM you can’t take the SIM card out of the phone.

While an ESIM is preferred for many reasons (we’ll get to other reason later in this article) you could still secure your physical SIM card by putting a SIM Card Lock on your SIM Card. The things you have to remember about a SIM Pin is

• Any time your phone turns off, whether you power is off or it dies, you will be asked to put your SIM Pin in before you can access your phone.
• You will have three attempts to enter your SIM PIN correctly before your SIM is locked.
• The SIM Pin is different than your iPhones lock screen passcode.

Keep Find My Mobile Turned On

In the event that your phone is lost or stolen you can access Find My Mobile to track, erase, and disconnect your phone from your Samsung Account and more (We’ll go over the usefulness of these in the next section).  Make sure Find My Mobile on in your settings and make sure you have your location turned on for the app in App Permissions.

Get Insurance On Your Phone

You can either get insurance through Samsung directly or you can get it through your Wireless Carrier. Whoever you get it through the deductible you would have to pay for a lost or stolen phone will be approximately a 1/5 to 1/4 of the price that your phone actually costs.

What to do if your Samsung Device is lost or stolen

If you’ve already taken the following steps above the worst thing that can happen at this point is you have to get a new phone. So first step is don’t freak out because you’ve prepared for this because I told you how.

Log Into Find My Mobile On Another Device

First step is to log into Find My Mobile on a computer or someone else’s phone. This is why you need to remember your Samsung Account email and Password so hopefully you do or you have it written down somewhere safe and not in your phone.

If you don’t remember it then you will have to reset your password and it could take up to 24 hours. You will get an email that will be sent to the email you use for your Samsung Account so hopefully you are logged into that email on another phone or computer or you can log into your email with your password on another device that your Samsung Account is connected to.

You may be able to reset your password if you have another device such as a Galaxy Watch or a Samsung Tablet as long as you are signed in to those devices with your Samsung Account.

Track Your Device

If you think you just lost it and you can locate it then you should be able to track your phone in realtime. If you think or know someone stole it, you can still track your device but I highly recommend you contact law enforcement so you aren’t tracking your phone into a dangerous situation.

Erase Your Device

A few things you should know right before you erase your phone is from the Find My Mobile app you could also attempt to back up your phone remotely before you erase it if you are unsure as to whether or not it’s backed up. And you can also lock the device remotely if you didn’t set up a passcode on it before or your device was opened when it was stolen.

If you know someone stole your device then they are probably not going to give it back. You’ll want to erase your phone before the device loses connection. If you have an ESIM on your phone, your device will erase as soon as it turns back on if they turned it off. If you had a physical SIM on your device it could be taken out of the phone so it doesn’t have service so you may not be able to do this but if you put a SIM PIN on your physical SIM card then they won’t be able to use your number for anything.

Also if you had your information backed up to Samsung Cloud and/or Google One then when you get a new phone you’ll still have all of your personal data and the hard drive of your previous phone will be wiped so your data will be safe no matter what.

Now Call Your Wireless Carrier and Samsung

The next thing you want to do is call your wireless carrier and Samsung and have your phone number suspended and the IMEI on the phone blocked and blacklisted. That way whoever stole it can’t do anything with the phone and they won’t be able to use your phone number for anything. If you have an ESIM on your phone or your put a SIM pin on your physical SIM card then your phone number being used isn’t the greatest concern. Keep your number on the ESIM active until your phone erases.

Get A New Phone

Now we have to get a new phone because some asshole stole it. Luckily you remember your Samsung Account and password, you backed up all of your information to Samsung Cloud, Google One, or another cloud service so you can get all of your personal data back and you have insurance on your phone so you don’t take a huge hit financially.