How to activate theft protection

These days, virtually our entire lives reside in our smartphones.

Our photos, our conversations, our work documents, our bank accounts, everything is on our phone.

It is therefore not for nothing that one of our great fears is losing our phone, or even worse that it is stolen!

Firstly because our phone has considerable monetary value, but above all because we save files and sometimes invaluable information on it.

It is for these reasons that Google offers functions to protect our devices against theft.

How to enable theft protection on Android?

In fall 2024, Google began gradually rolling out theft protection to Android phones.

Since there are billions of Android phones in the world, ours may not have the feature yet. Please note that this is a progressive deployment.

To check if we have theft protection on our Android device, we must:

1. Open the app: Settings;
2. Go to the tab: Google;
3. Select option: All services;
4. Scroll to the bottom and press: Theft protection.

Lock your Android phone if theft is detected

The first feature that we will find and that we can activate is the possibility of locking your phone in the event of theft.

That is to say that with the sensors of our phone, it is able to detect a sudden gesture such as a theft and when the person runs away.

Here’s how Google explains how it works:

If Theft Detection Lock detects that your device has been stolen, your device’s screen will automatically lock to prevent anyone from accessing your personal data.

This feature uses your device’s motion sensors, as well as Wi-Fi and smart device connections, to try to detect if someone suddenly grabs your device and runs away.

Lock your phone when it’s offline

The other feature that we find to protect our phone against theft is the offline device lock.

This function allows us to lock our phone if it is disconnected from the internet.

Your device’s screen will lock shortly after it goes offline to help protect your data. For example, your device will lock itself if someone steals it and turns off the internet to prevent its geolocation.

Lock your phone remotely

Still in the features to protect our Android phone against theft, we also find the option of being able to remotely lock our device.

This feature is somewhat similar to the theft protection on iPhones.

How to block a stolen phone?

If we ever think we have lost our phone or think it has been stolen, all we have to do is go to android.com/lock.

By going to the page, we simply have to enter our phone number to be able to remotely lock our device.

Find your device and erase data

Finally, the last functionality that we find is that of being able to locate our device and even delete our data remotely.

This feature for finding a lost or stolen Android cell phone has existed for several years.

This uses the application: Find my device from Google. Application which also allows us to find our Bluetooth devices.

Thanks to this application, all you have to do is log in to your Google account on any device in order to be able to locate our phone.

It is also thanks to it that we can delete our data remotely in a case where we want to ensure that we protect all of our information on our device.