Have you ever stopped to consider just how much of your digital life is stored on your smartphone?
First, there are the names and phone numbers of all your contacts (and possibly their email addresses as well).
Then there are apps for accessing your bank account, your social media accounts and the accounts for all the other online services you use (and possibly the usernames and passwords to those accounts as well).
And of course your photos and all manner of sensitive personal information that you wouldn’t want just anyone to have access to.
Now, consider what could happen if you were to lose your phone or it ended up getting stolen.
Yep, that’s right…whoever manages to get their hands on your phone could potentially have access to everything that’s stored on it.
Of course putting a strong Unlock PIN on the device will go along way towards protecting your photos and sensitive info, but what if the person in possession of your phone also knows your PIN – or somehow manages to get it?
As you can see, there are no absolute guarantees for the privacy of the info and photos that are stored on your phone should it ever fall into malicious hands.
That’s why you need to know how to remotely erase your phone as quickly as possible if it ever gets lost or stolen.
Luckily, it’s pretty easy to remotely erase both Android phones and iPhones.
Important: Don’t follow the steps below to erase your phone unless you’re certain that the device is truly lost/stolen and not simply misplaced. Once the phone is erased every bit of info and every photo that was on it will be gone from the device. Proceed with caution!
If you have an Android phone:
1 – Visit https://myaccount.google.com/security and sign into your Google account when prompted to do so.
2 – Scroll down to the “Your devices” section and click Find a lost device.
3 – Select the missing phone from the list of registered devices.
4 – Click Erase Device and follow the prompts as they appear.
If you have an iPhone:
1 – Visit https://www.icloud.com/find and sign into your account with your Apple ID and password.
2 – Click All devices and select the missing iPhone from the list.
3 – Click Erase iPhone and follow the prompts as they appear.
That’s all there is to it. Now you know how to quickly erase your smartphone if you ever discover that it’s been lost or stolen.