Lost Phone Best Practice

Hello All,

I recently lost my Droid Bionic phone and have not been contacted by anyone to return it. I've reached the conclusion that it is not going to be returned.

I have taken several steps, aided by information I've found by searching this forum, but thought it may make sense to compile a set of steps that a person who looses their phone should take, including the appropriate sequence, based on the great body of knowledge you all possess.

The reasoning behind compiling a list with sequence is that I think I missed some steps or did the wrong thing at some point. Perhaps you all can help me understand if there is anything left for me to do.

This is what I did:

• Panic
• Return to location to look for it and leave my contact information with a manager
• Call carrier to suspend service on phone
• Research apps to be used to locate or wipe phone remotely
• Push AndroidLost to my phone from Google Play Store
• Reactivate my phone (as I figured out the app wouldn't push until my phone was back on the network)
• Following instructions from AndroidLost, send sms to my phone to attempt to register it with the app
• Call carrier to ask when the phone was last connected to the network (prior day. It had not been connected since it was lost)
• Continue hoping it would surface or register on the network
• Finally call carrier back to suspend service to phone and mark it as lost/stolen
• Change Google passwords
• Change all other passwords to important sites/services
• PRAY someone isn't hacking it for sensitive information..

Any other steps I could take besides not suspending service before trying to recover phone with a lost phone app? (besides installing such app before loosing phone..)

Thanks in advance,

 

Thanks - I trust that to blacklist the IMEI, I need to contact my carrier - correct?

 

Should I resume service to the phone with the hope that I could get AndoidLost (or other similar app) to push to the device so I can wipe it?

My primary concern is for the data on the device, not the handset itself. ( I was ready to replace it anyway)

 

Thanks for the replies. Fortunately, I did have a pattern on my lock screen and it sets after only a brief period of inactivity so it was probably locked when found.

I suppose one of the take-aways of this experience is that a user should not disable a lost phone immediately upon discovery of it missing but instead hope one of the location apps can find it.

Once that has been attempted a user should then contact their carrier and suspend service.