Circumvent a catastrophe.

I received the following email over the weekend.  It recounts a recent robbery my friend's friend experienced one block from our house.  NOT A HOAX.  Thankfully, this woman is OK and, as you'll read, is slowly recovering her belongings.  Still, so incredibly unnerving/scary/creepy.  

Learn from her experience AND be sure to read The Very Helpful Suggestions below the email.

DEAR "SMART" FAMILY AND FRIENDS THAT CARRY AROUND "SMART" PHONES.

Think about all the personal and confidential information you are keeping on your "smart" phones. Consider what you may release to others should you lose your phone or have it stolen. 

I was robbed yesterday of my two-day-old IPAD and purse including my very "smart" Android, right in front of my home at 2:00 in the afternoon with a full construction crew working on a house across the street and gardeners in my yard!!! 

I am physically fine but exhausted from police reports, changing bank accounts, auto payments, credit cards, cell phone, email accounts, changing password etc. 

The biggest surprise was the lack of privacy that the Android carries with it and that is why I am writing to you.   Verizon was able to shut my phone down but NOT access to my Contacts, Calendar, or  anything else I put on the phone (like I should remember all of that at my age).  The phone can also be "pinged"  but only by Court Order signed by a judge and that does not happen on weekends.

I had been looking into the secure "MobileMe" and still "thinking" about it before this happened.

Be Wise!

P.S. I was followed home from the Apple Store 5 miles away.

From one knowledgeable source:  Simply setting a non-obvious passcode that you have to enter to unlock the device is a good start.  At the very least a passcode gives you a time delay before someone has access to your information.  You can do that on any of the Android, IPhone or Blackberry devices.

And another:  Here’s a link to Apple’s page describing how the mobile me service provides various options for a lost IPhone.  You can make it chirp if you’ve misplaced it, you can locate it on a map.  You can remotely set a password or completely wipe the device.  It’s pretty cool.

http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/find-my-iphone.html

And one more:  FYI: To do this, you need to subscribe to the MobileMe service from Apple