Smartphones are a prime target for identity thieves and criminals due to their high resale value and the personal information contained on the devices. If your device is lost or stolen, you can protect yourself, the data it contains, and your device by following these guidelines.

Phones hold so much of our digital lives β€” emails, social media and bank accounts, photos, chat messages and more β€” that if they ever get stolen or go missing, it can cause major disruption beyond just the loss of a device.

In some places, phone thefts have surged so much it's now an everyday problem, with thieves on electric bikes snatching them out of pedestrians' hands, swiping them off restaurant tables or pickpocketing them on public transportation.

Here are steps you can take before and after your phone goes missing:

People look at their phones while waiting to cross an intersection in the rain at the Taikoo Li Sanlitun shopping center in Beijing in July.

Basic protections

There are things you can do to make it less painful if your phone is stolen. Because some of these features are more technical in nature, people often overlook them.

Lock down as much as you can. At a minimum, require a password or biometric scan to unlock the device. You can also add similar requirements to important individual apps to protect your finances or chats from thieves.

Also, activate the Find My Device feature, which is available for both iOS and Android. Samsung also offers its own service called SmartThings Find.

You'll probably have lots of precious photos saved on your camera roll. It's a good idea to back them up, along with contacts, calendar items and other files. Google and Apple offer cloud-based backup services.Β You can also back up your files to an external hard drive, memory card or laptop.

Some police forces and phone companies advise turning off message previews, which prevents thieves trying to break into your accounts from seeing reset or login codes when the phone is locked. To do this on an iPhone, for example, go to the Notifications section of your settings menu and tap Show Previews. You can also scroll down the app list to turn previews off for individual apps but leave them on for less risky ones like news or weather.

FILE - People gather at an Apple store for the release of the iPhone 14 on Sept. 16, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)

Turn on newer features

Recent iOS and Android updates include a number of new functions designed to make thefts less attractive.

IPhone users can turn on Stolen Device Protection, which makes it a lot harder for phone thieves to access key functions and settings. Many thieves will want to wipe the data off and reset the phone so they can resell it, but with this feature on, they'll need a face or fingerprint scan to do so.Β 

Android phones, meanwhile, can now detect motion, indicating someone snatched it out of your hand and is racing away on foot or a bike, and then lock the screen immediately. And there's a feature called Private Spaces that lets you hide sensitive files on your phone.

Jot down your device number

Take note of your phone's serial number, also known as an IMEI number. It can link you to the phone if it does eventually get recovered. Call it up by typing *#06# on your phone's keypad. If you've already lost your phone, you can also find the IMEI number in other places like the box it came in.

A Samsung worker gives a demonstration of the Galaxy Z Flip Phone at the Unpacked 2020 event Feb. 11, 2020,Β in San Francisco.

If it's stolen

If you're unlucky enough to have your phone stolen, notify police. Call your insurance company if you have a policy that covers the device. Inform your phone company so it can freeze your number and issue a replacement SIM card or eSIM. Notify your bank so it can watch out for suspicious transactions.

Tracking your device

Try to locate your phone with the Find My Device feature. For iPhones, go to iCloud.com/find from a web browser; Android users should head to www.google.com/android/find. Samsung also has its own service for Galaxy phones.

These services will show your phone's current or last known location on a map, which is also handy if you've just lost track of it somewhere in the house. Apple says even if a phone can't connect to the internet or has been turned off, it can use Bluetooth to ping any nearby Apple devices using the same network behind its AirTags tracking devices. Google says newer Pixel phones can be located "for several hours" after they've been turned off using similar technology.

You can get the phone to play a sound, even if it's on silent. You can also put the phone in lost mode, which locks it and displays a message and contact details on the screen for anyone who finds it. Lost mode on iOS also suspends any Apple Pay cards and passes.

The new iPhone 16 is filmed and photographed during an announcement of new products at Apple headquarters Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in Cupertino, Calif. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)

Final steps

If you can't find your phone, there are some final steps to take.

Log yourself out of all your accounts that might be accessible on the phone, and then remove it from your list of trusted devices that you use to get multifactor authentication codes β€” but make sure you can get those codes somewhere else, such as email.

Then, as a last resort, you can erase the phone remotely so that there's no chance of any data falling into the wrong hands. However, take note: Apple says that if the iPhone is offline, the remote erase will only happen the next time it comes back online. But if you find the phone before it gets erased, you can cancel the request.

Google warns that SD memory cards plugged into Android phones might not be remotely erased. And after the phone has been wiped, it won't show up with Find My Device.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip Phones are displayed at the Unpacked 2020 event in San Francisco, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

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