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My Esteem was stolen yesterday

MetroPOS

Android Enthusiast
Mar 4, 2011
321
39
South FL
I really regret having never installed a tracking app on my phone cause I could have located the phone within a few minutes of it being stolen since the thief left my phone on for quite a while before they finally shut it off. I was carrying a bunch of stuff and my pockets were full, and accidentally ended up leaving the phone at a table I was sitting at for not even 2 minutes...and it was gone.

This is the first time in 11 years that I've ever lost a cell phone/been a victim of theft, so I never bothered to install an app for tracking since I figured it could never happen to me cause I'm usually extremely careful when it comes to my belongings. You guys should all install a tracking app ASAP on yours...trust me it is worth it. Worst part isn't losing the phone...it's losing all the media and text message conversations I had from the year.

Now it's going to cost me another $150 to get a new Esteem (cause I've still got that $100 rebate on the way) from Wirefly...but the thing is, the Esteem I had NEVER experienced any of those rebooting problems that I see everyone complaining about all the time. I'm most likely going to end up with a new Esteem that has the same problems everyone else has with theirs now. Oh well. Just posting this to strongly advise you guys to install a tracking app right now. There goes $350, plus whatever I paid for a 16gb sd card and a case...and all the pics and vids and great convs I had this year.
 
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Yeah I already suspended the phone last night, but I actually just found out about this app called Plan B just now that can be remotely installed into your stolen phone over air that you can then use to track its location. I just unsuspended the phone now and tried to install Plan B, but since our phone has horrible battery life, my stolen Esteem has either been turned off, destroyed, or the battery is dead by now since its been over 12 hours without a charge. Wish I had known about Plan B last night. Could have had the sucker arrested last night while the phone was still on
 
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The same thing happened to me when I got my first Optimus M and I had where's my droid on it but I always have my GPS off so it was worthless. I showed me it was like 20 miles away within 20 minutes of being stolen...lol not happening in LA traffic around 5pm. The only option I wish I had was to be able to wipe out all data on it remotely like I saw on some other app(can't remember the name) The only thing I was glad I did was put a password on the lock screen so at least they didnt get into it right away but I sure they saw all my pics from the SD card.
 
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The same thing happened to me when I got my first Optimus M and I had where's my droid on it but I always have my GPS off so it was worthless. I showed me it was like 20 miles away within 20 minutes of being stolen...lol not happening in LA traffic around 5pm. The only option I wish I had was to be able to wipe out all data on it remotely like I saw on some other app(can't remember the name) The only thing I was glad I did was put a password on the lock screen so at least they didnt get into it right away but I sure they saw all my pics from the SD card.

I hope you turned the alarm on too lol.
 
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When my next Esteem arrives tomorrow or Wednesday, I'll test the over the air Plan B app to see if it works when you have GPS disabled. I also never had GPS turned on cause it usually ate a lot of battery life, but according to the developer, Plan B can enable GPS on some phones even if GPS was turned off. If that's the case with our phone, then all you'd have to do is hope whoever took the phone didn't turn it off right away
 
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I tested out Plan B earlier. I got this email as soon as I downloaded it but it never found my location.

But it did however in the email, did point me to BestBuy to purchase a new phone Ahaha
Plan%20B%20email.png
 
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Ive been using a tracking beta app called androidlost,It is awesome and its free.
I recommend it highly. You can remotely force your phone to call you on another line and take pictures remotely and just a whole lot more for free.This app does it all hidden. You can even hide it from app drawer. My whole family has this app and i use it all the time.
 
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I got the replacement Esteem today, and unfortunately, Plan B was not able to turn on GPS on its own if you had it disabled. I always had my GPS set to E911 only from the location settings menu...and would enable it only when I needed it, so it turns out that even if I had tried Plan B after my phone was stolen, I wouldn't have been able to track it anyway.

But I will mention that when I enabled GPS on this new phone and installed Plan B, it had the exact location of my phone emailed to me in a few min...not a local Best Buy store. I dunno...maybe from now on I'll start enabling GPS.
 
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I got the replacement Esteem today, and unfortunately, Plan B was not able to turn on GPS on its own if you had it disabled. I always had my GPS set to E911 only from the location settings menu...and would enable it only when I needed it, so it turns out that even if I had tried Plan B after my phone was stolen, I wouldn't have been able to track it anyway.

But I will mention that when I enabled GPS on this new phone and installed Plan B, it had the exact location of my phone emailed to me in a few min...not a local Best Buy store. I dunno...maybe from now on I'll start enabling GPS.

I keep my GPS on all the time with no ill effects and i use Androidlost for tracking and other cool thing remotely. It doesn't have the best web design but its very powerful still in features. I really like the feature of hiding Androidlost in app-drawer. It works with SMS and Web control. With Androidlost you can enable and disable GPS remotley with SMS or WEB.
 
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But shouldn't the police be able to find it in e911. Even if the phone is off. Once the battery is in and has juice. It is trackable. At my uncles workplace. That's hose they found his phone and busted rhw theif

Yeah the police can do a lot, but that's if they are willing to chase after a $250 dollar phone around town using valuable resources, now if you had the location way before they show up to your door to take a report you can guide them to the general location.On the other hand if the thief is involved in a grand theft and phone is involved, that might be an accepted reason for chasing down the phone with their resources.
 
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Pretty sure the phone's E911 location tracking feature only works when someone calls 911 so that the 911 operator can immediately see the location of the phone call...but I could be wrong.

I know that in a crime situation they can do advanced things to track a phone when it's being used and things like that, but for theft they probably won't give a rats ass. Only way I was gonna be able to get it back is if I had had regular GPS enabled. Hopefully that's the first and last time I lose and have an Android phone stolen though
 
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Pretty sure the phone's E911 location tracking feature only works when someone calls 911 so that the 911 operator can immediately see the location of the phone call...but I could be wrong.

I know that in a crime situation they can do advanced things to track a phone when it's being used and things like that, but for theft they probably won't give a rats ass. Only way I was gonna be able to get it back is if I had had regular GPS enabled. Hopefully that's the first and last time I lose and have an Android phone stolen though

Hey i just thought of something.

Did you change your password to your Gmail account?

Oh and another thought. It doesn't matter if you had GPS enabled or not.You just can simply quickly push a tracking app "androidlost" with android market and just enable GPS then remotely.

So if someone has not installed a tracking app and your phone gets stolen or lost, Don't worry or at least not as much.You can do the market push on allot of the tracking apps out there and track away.

Not to insult your intelligence. We can all miss the simple things.
As i quote a fellow forum member i know "This isn't your first rodeo". Lol
 
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I didn't change the password to my google account because my stolen phone had the pattern lock screen (I used a very difficult one thankfully) so I was not concerned about them obtaining or trying to figure out my password, but I did change my email...eh maybe I will just change the password on google account too now I suppose

Oh and I just tested androidlost on my new Esteem just now and remotely installed it and everything, and just like Plan B, it doesn't work when GPS is turned off. On the website control thing they have, the toggle to turn on GPS and locate doesn't work when you have your Esteem's GPS Privacy Setting set to E911 only...just like Plan B.
 
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I didn't change the password to my google account because my stolen phone had the pattern lock screen (I used a very difficult one thankfully) so I was not concerned about them obtaining or trying to figure out my password, but I did change my email...eh maybe I will just change the password on google account too now I suppose

Oh and I just tested androidlost on my new Esteem just now and remotely installed it and everything, and just like Plan B, it doesn't work when GPS is turned off. On the website control thing they have, the toggle to turn on GPS and locate doesn't work when you have your Esteem's GPS Privacy Setting set to E911 only...just like Plan B.

Im sorry the GPS toggle didn't work for you.

I wish you a better experience with this new phone.
 
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