How To Find A Stolen Cell Phone With GPS Tracking

Finding that your cell phone was been stolen can be a gut-wrenching experience.  It is your connection to the world and all of a sudden it is ripped from your life, falling into the hands of a complete stranger. Questions have to be racing through your mind at this point.  Can I get it back? Can I keep my data private? What will happen to all my pictures?

Thankfully, we live in a world that has more to it than those who seek to steal mobile phones.  We also have innovators who create applications for cell phones that keep our personal data safe and track down a stolen phone. A group of these good guys have created an app called Lookout Mobile Security and it is currently free to download on BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Mobile smartphones.  It does more than just use GPS tracking to find a stolen cell phone.  It is a full ledge smartphone security suite that will let you protect your phone from physical and virtual threats.

How can I track my stolen cell phone?

Smartphones are an investment. If you buy one without a free upgrade deal or sign-up promotion it can cost hundreds of dollars. High end phones range between $500-$600 before the contracts and promotions bring the price down to (just) $200. Quite frankly, it does not matter what price you buy at  – any smartphone is going to be a really expensive phone. Until the cell phone boom it was not normal for people to carry such an expensive piece of hardware with them everywhere, especially one that is so easily lost or stolen.  When it gets stolen you want to find a way to get it back, now.

GPS tracking provides the solution for a lot of people who want to get their stolen cell phone back. By leveraging the smartphone’s location finding capabilities and the data plan that is almost assuredly included with the phone, users of the Lookout Mobile Security app will be able to find the location of their cell phone  (provided that it is on, of course).

Now this brings up one of the three HUGE caveats that need to be understood about tracking a stolen cell phone. The first is that you must have already downloaded the GPS tracking app before the phone is stolen.  In other words, the cell phone must still be in your possession when you put the app on it. You cannot download any apps that will let you track your stolen mobile remotely. Sorry, but that is just the way that it is. UPDATE:  Android phones CAN install certain apps remotely that will let you track down a lost or stolen phone.  You can find a write up we did here: How To Install GPS Tracking Apps Remotely To Find A Lost Or Stolen Android Cell Phone

The second caveat is that the cell phone must be turned on for the Lookout Mobile Security app or any other stolen phone recovery app to work. The phone needs to be on for several reasons. The first is that it needs to be able to receive the message from the Lookout servers to get the phone to use its GPS chip to determine the cell phone’s location. This is the same with all stolen cell phone recovery programs. Mobile Me, Lookout, et al work this way.

The second reason the phone must be on is that it power is required to use the cell phone towers and/or GPS chip to figure out where the phone is. A phone that is unable to find its own location is of no use to someone trying to find out where it is!

The third caveat is that the phone must be in range of a cell tower. In order to track the phone, it must in contact with the network to receive messages and to communicate with you, the owner.  Both reception and transmission of messages is hindered if the phone is outside the boundary of its network or has some physical impediment to cell signals.  Without the network you are screwed.

But given that the phone is on, it is in network range, and you have already downloaded the tracking app, how helpful will one of these apps truly be?  Can it provide an exact location for a lost phone?

Precision depends on several important factors.  Sometimes a location will be very good, reliably providing an exact address for the location of your phone.  Other times it simply be a reasonable guess, one just good enough to give you a general idea where the phone might be.

Here is picture taken from the web interface of a GPS tracking app that will be illustrative of just how exact tracking can be:

If you have good eyes you will see that the circle around the phone is fairly large. It says it has an accuracy of 1,870 meters, or a little over 1 mile. The center of the circle, represented by a cell phone icon, is a pretty accurate representation of where my phone is, being off my perhaps several hundred feet.

This underscores the point that with GPS tracking apps you have little knowledge beforehand about how accurate the location is going to be. There are too many factors that can cause GPS errors. For example, my home is of an older, more solid construction than newer homes might be. I have had great difficulty getting a solid GPS fix for my location on several different devices. I may measure my location one day and get one set of coordinates only to measure it again the next day and get coordinates hundreds of feet away from previous measurements. While this is not good for tracking down a lost cell phone with GPS, it is reality.

In addition to the make up of the place where the cell phone has been taken you also have to consider other aspects of location that may come into play. Large surrounding buildings, lots of trees, canyon walls, and other inhospitable terrain features can cause GPS tracking equipment to give inaccurate readings. These can skew the position information just as wildly as the composition of the home.

You should not let these factors prevent you from downloading an app that will help you recover your stolen cell phone. You have no way of knowing who is going to steal it or where they are going to take it. For all you know, you could get an almost exact location for the cell phone, like in this picture:

My phone was in the same exact place when I used Lookout to find its location previously (see pic above this one to see the difference). I went from getting a location somewhere within a mile of the place they put my phone to being within 26 feet. That is a very great difference and it just goes to show how tricky GPS tracking can be for any device – let alone a cell phone.

But this location is really spot on. I live exactly where the tracking app puts me. Checking the location of a lost or stolen phone more than once is a good idea!

How can I get back my stolen cell phone?

Now that you have figured out the location of your phone there are a couple of things that you can do to get your cell phone back. The first, wisest and easiest is to call the police. If you were the victim of a mugging or other assault the police will probably be more than happy to use your information to find the criminal. They will want to get the crook off the street, especially since they were willing to be violent over something as simple as a cell phone.  They also have an eye witness (you!) that can place the suspect at the scene, sealing the case for them and getting another criminal off the streets. There are several news stories circulating the press that confirm this.

Another thing that you could do to get your cell phone back is confront the thief and get them to give you your cell phone back. Just don’t pull an OJ and do it at gun point. You’ll probably go to prison yourself for being a total idiot. Instead, make it safe and do it in a public place. This also only really works if it is stolen by somebody that you know. Using shame and public confrontation is a great way to get the phone back once you know who stole it.

How can I wipe the data on my stolen cell phone?

Let’s say that you have tried to recover your phone but the thief is refusing to hand over the good.  Maybe it was taken over the border by a drug runner and now lies in drug-cartel-infested territory and your value your life more than your cell phone. Fine, be a wuss.  You still don’t have to let the thief know who are your emergency contacts.  You can still stop them from seeing all those awesome photos you took last night at the bar. You can still keep your personal data personal.

Applications like Lookout Mobile Security allow users to wipe cell phone data clean.  All personal information will be discretely thrown overboard with concrete shoes on, never to be seen again. Bad guys can’t steal your contact information or learn how to target you for future crimes from your cell phone. The wipe feature does cost a monthly subscription fee – but I can imagine only using it for one month, the month your cell phone was stolen in.

If you can’t get your stolen cell phone back with GPS tracking then at least you can wipe it clean.

Can I mess with the person who stole my cell phone?

One of the really cool things about the Lookout app is that you can make your phone scream. It is a great way to prove that you are the owner of the phone in those public confrontations or to help the police find the phone after they raid the location where your phone is.

A simple command from the app’s web interface and you can turn your phone into a screaming, vibrating, and flashing nightmare for the unsuspecting crook.  This was originally designed to help users find a lost cell phone, but it really would be a great trick to play on a crook.

Stolen Cell Phone GPS Tracking Apps

Here is a list of some tracking apps that are designed to help you recover your lost or stolen cell phone:

• Lookout Mobile Security – Free (Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile)
• MobileMe – $99/year (iPhone)
• iHound – $3.99/year (Android, iPhone)
• GadgetTrack – 19.95 (Android, BlackBerry, iPhone)

Obviously free is better.

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If you found this post useful, feel free to share it with your friends so that they don’t have to worry about their cell phone if it gets stolen. Always having a tracking app on hand is a good way to make sure they can retrieve their phone. You can help them by:

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