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Hi developpers. I
My droid phone verson 4.1.2 was stolen last friday. But I was able to track the phone, confront with the thief and recover my phone two days later.
And that's why I am writing in this forum, because I want to share my experience and see if things can be done.....
The thief, stupid guy, removed all my sim cards (dual sim) and removed the memory card, but failed to do the necessary resets and did not remove my google account.
I don't want any lock screen system on my phone. And I strongly recommend everybody not to put a lock screen protection on your phone, because if there is one, the phone might just end straight into the trash bin, and you'll be left with no chance to find back your beloved Droid.
Let the thief in his beliefs it's his lucky day.... he has a nice unprotected full useable phone....
Also have Remotely locate this device enabled in the google settings, or get one of these hidden tracking apps on your phon.. Also enable allow remote lock and factory resets. The thief was so stupid he forgot to disable this feature of the phone.
Now here is my point. The Google Settings should be password protected. And it should be a shared password with the phone settings/Personal/ BACKUP AND RESET option.
At least, password protecting these two sections of the phone will avoid the thief to:
1. Disable the geo location of your phone
2. Doing a factory reset or remove any of the accounts on your phone.
Unless the thief is also a hacker, you will always be able to track your phone and get it back.
In my case, I tracked down the thief, up to 4m accuracy. I also have a Bluetooth speaker. I went to the Geo location and my Bluetooth speaker confirmed big time the phone was at this location.
Another thing to consider is to build INTO the OS itself is the option to track your phone. There are many programs on Google Play, but they can all be removed easily with a simple factory reset. This kind of software should be build in INTO the phone's OS itself.
Good luck to all of you who get your phone stolen!
oz457 said:
Hi developpers. I
My droid phone verson 4.1.2 was stolen last friday. But I was able to track the phone, confront with the thief and recover my phone two days later.
And that's why I am writing in this forum, because I want to share my experience and see if things can be done.....
The thief, stupid guy, removed all my sim cards (dual sim) and removed the memory card, but failed to do the necessary resets and did not remove my google account.
I don't want any lock screen system on my phone. And I strongly recommend everybody not to put a lock screen protection on your phone, because if there is one, the phone might just end straight into the trash bin, and you'll be left with no chance to find back your beloved Droid.
Let the thief in his beliefs it's his lucky day.... he has a nice unprotected full useable phone....
Also have Remotely locate this device enabled in the google settings, or get one of these hidden tracking apps on your phon.. Also enable allow remote lock and factory resets. The thief was so stupid he forgot to disable this feature of the phone.
Now here is my point. The Google Settings should be password protected. And it should be a shared password with the phone settings/Personal/ BACKUP AND RESET option.
At least, password protecting these two sections of the phone will avoid the thief to:
1. Disable the geo location of your phone
2. Doing a factory reset or remove any of the accounts on your phone.
Unless the thief is also a hacker, you will always be able to track your phone and get it back.
In my case, I tracked down the thief, up to 4m accuracy. I also have a Bluetooth speaker. I went to the Geo location and my Bluetooth speaker confirmed big time the phone was at this location.
Another thing to consider is to build INTO the OS itself is the option to track your phone. There are many programs on Google Play, but they can all be removed easily with a simple factory reset. This kind of software should be build in INTO the phone's OS itself.
Good luck to all of you who get your phone stolen!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is why you should use Software to prevent this. There are lots of tracking/AntiThief Software available. Noone will put it to trash when its locked,
mynote said:
This is why you should use Software to prevent this. There are lots of tracking/AntiThief Software available. Noone will put it to trash when its locked,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The question is if software will really help....
You're lucky.
The thief, stupid guy. If He smart than, he can google and reboot your phone in to recovery, and he can Wipe all of your data.
And your phone will gone forever
andy-q said:
The question is if software will really help....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. It is. 9 of 10 of my customers are happy and got ist device back after stolen/lost.
Just for the statistics..
The only shortcoming with the tracking/remote lock/wipe abilities is that they can still be defeated through CWM or whatever recovery is being used. That said, in most situations involving theft the thief doesn't have this level of knowledge to consider this step.
What's interesting to me is that so many people still steal phones for personal use, but I guess the stolen ESN database isn't far reaching enough yet to make it a stolen phone worthless for use yet. There is still some cash to be made selling them off for the hardware, but grabbing someone's phone doesn't seem worth a felony IMO.
As to the OP, a lock screen isn't worthless, especially if you have a non-removable battery. Most phones with them--an active lock screen I mean--either won't allow or can be set to disallow the phone being turned off without the code/pattern/password being entered, meaning if your phone is tossed in the trash it can still be recovered. That is one feature that will always make an integrated battery a plus. Even without one, there's the chance that the thief isn't going to take the time to pull the battery once he see's there's active security anyway.
MissionImprobable said:
The only shortcoming with the tracking/remote lock/wipe abilities is that they can still be defeated through CWM or whatever recovery is being used. That said, in most situations involving theft the thief doesn't have this level of knowledge to consider this step.
What's interesting to me is that so many people still steal phones for personal use, but I guess the stolen ESN database isn't far reaching enough yet to make it a stolen phone worthless for use yet. There is still some cash to be made selling them off for the hardware, but grabbing someone's phone doesn't seem worth a felony IMO.
As to the OP, a lock screen isn't worthless, especially if you have a non-removable battery. Most phones with them--an active lock screen I mean--either won't allow or can be set to disallow the phone being turned off without the code/pattern/password being entered, meaning if your phone is tossed in the trash it can still be recovered. That is one feature that will always make an integrated battery a plus. Even without one, there's the chance that the thief isn't going to take the time to pull the battery once he see's there's active security anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah, true. Anyway. Even if you are just loosing your phone instead of getting stolen..
I consider that the thief will trash the phone when there is a lockscreen. Mostly the thief will try to look for "Reset-Possibilities". If you have a good AntiThief Software you may also disable the lockscreen when you feel that its the only way to get it back.
Anyway, there is Google Android Device Manager now which can get your device back easily..
When stolen/lost phone comes back I would check it for spyware
2 stolen phones never came back to me. :'(
Grievances. RIP .
alaminok said:
2 stolen phones never came back to me. :'(
Grievances. RIP .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never got my stolen items back either but grats to the OP
This is the perfect thread for a question I've had ever since I came to the Android family from my iPhone.
On my Jailbroken iPhone I was able to download an app that took a picture with the front camera and sent it to the email of my choice every time the wrong password was entered, the photo came along with the GPS location of the phone and time.
Is there anything like this available for us
Sent from my SM-N900P using Tapatalk now Free
yoboyheartless said:
This is the perfect thread for a question I've had ever since I came to the Android family from my iPhone.
On my Jailbroken iPhone I was able to download an app that took a picture with the front camera and sent it to the email of my choice every time the wrong password was entered, the photo came along with the GPS location of the phone and time.
Is there anything like this available for us
Sent from my SM-N900P using Tapatalk now Free
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here Try Ceberus, its a paid app but worth it and you can have up to 5 devices at once, it even disguies itself as a system app you can view calls, text messages and even make the phone call any other phone track it via GPS..... a bunch of features
(Heres some features It has three ways to protect your device:
- Remote control through the website www.cerberusapp.com
- Remote control via text messages
- SIM Checker (for devices that have a SIM card): you will automatically receive alerts if someone uses your phone with an unauthorized SIM card
Remote control allows you to perform many operations on your device, like:
- Locate and track it
- Start a loud alarm, even if the device is set to silent mode
- Wipe the internal memory and the SD card
- Hide Cerberus from the app drawer
- Lock the device with a code
- Record audio from the microphone
- Get a list of last calls sent and received
- Get information about network and operator the device is connected to
- And much more!)
Link---> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lsdroid.cerberus
if thieves are smart, they would have been reading xda
but thanks
If thieves were smart, they would be educated enough to get a job and buy their own sh*t!
I use Cerberus as well on both my droids. Very neat app, and even more advanced than FindMyiPhone or whatever it's called again. Recommended with root for all features though.
Glad you got lucky and a non-tech savvy thief stole your phone.
cerberus
Cerberus celebrates 3rd birthday with free licenses for the next 30 hours
http://phandroid.com/2014/04/24/cerberus-3rd-birthday-free-license/
I had a phone lost/stolen. It is such a personal item it is like having your wallet stolen. Fortunately I never use the remember password feature for any apps, and have an encrypted password file I keep up to date and backed up.When I lost my phone I went to all the sites and changed my passwords. What a pia, but it is some peace of mind. Took many hours.
With t-mo, they have this feature available that takes a picture after 5 mis-trys and emails it along with the location, T-mo will also erase the phone and reset the lock screen pattern, It works pretty good because I have sent numerous pics of myself from fatfingerin the unlock.and checked the map to verify.
I prefer Cerberus...
oz457 said:
Hi developpers. I
My droid phone verson 4.1.2 was stolen last friday. But I was able to track the phone, confront with the thief and recover my phone two days later.
And that's why I am writing in this forum, because I want to share my experience and see if things can be done.....
The thief, stupid guy, removed all my sim cards (dual sim) and removed the memory card, but failed to do the necessary resets and did not remove my google account.
I don't want any lock screen system on my phone. And I strongly recommend everybody not to put a lock screen protection on your phone, because if there is one, the phone might just end straight into the trash bin, and you'll be left with no chance to find back your beloved Droid.
Let the thief in his beliefs it's his lucky day.... he has a nice unprotected full useable phone....
Also have Remotely locate this device enabled in the google settings, or get one of these hidden tracking apps on your phon.. Also enable allow remote lock and factory resets. The thief was so stupid he forgot to disable this feature of the phone.
Now here is my point. The Google Settings should be password protected. And it should be a shared password with the phone settings/Personal/ BACKUP AND RESET option.
At least, password protecting these two sections of the phone will avoid the thief to:
1. Disable the geo location of your phone
2. Doing a factory reset or remove any of the accounts on your phone.
Unless the thief is also a hacker, you will always be able to track your phone and get it back.
In my case, I tracked down the thief, up to 4m accuracy. I also have a Bluetooth speaker. I went to the Geo location and my Bluetooth speaker confirmed big time the phone was at this location.
Another thing to consider is to build INTO the OS itself is the option to track your phone. There are many programs on Google Play, but they can all be removed easily with a simple factory reset. This kind of software should be build in INTO the phone's OS itself.
Good luck to all of you who get your phone stolen!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much for all the info. My biggest concern would be confronting the thief. What did you do? Wait for them to leave their house/apartment and confront them? Or did you confront them in some other way? I guess I would struggle between wanting my beloved phone back and being worried about the thief being a crazy person who might shoot me or something.
This Was Very Helpful
This is Very Helpful, We Wish We Had Known this when we had our phone stolen, I spent endless hours trying to locate my phone to no avail, thank goodness the Police were able to recuperate the phone, but only because the thief had stolen a number of other devices in the area, if I had known this information I would have saved myself hours of frustration !! BTW, Thank You For Sharing This !
Hi,
Yesterday I set a fingerprint lock on my S7. It prompted me to enter a backup password and some other password, both with different requirements (one only had to be 4 letters, one was longer and had a number) and the longer one had to be confirmed whereas the shorter one did not. I set this up and tested it a few times, everything seemed to work great. Later I let my phone idle and it turned the screen off on its own for the first time, ever since then the phone has not been able to recognize my fingerprint. It doesn't even say "No match", it just acts like I'm not even putting a finger on it at all.
Tried over and over and eventually tried the backup password, which for some reason is the shorter one without a number. I put in what I am absolutely sure I put in, and it wouldn't take it. Tried a couple more times, even got so desperate as to emulate potential typing errors I might have made (since no confirmation for that password) and nothing worked.
Eventually I hit the timed lockout and I had to stop trying things then. So I went online and searched and discovered Google's Android Device Manager. I heard that if you lock the phone with it you can unlock it through the same manager and the phone will be unlocked. First thing that was odd was that ADM didn't give me an option to enter a password, just a contact message and phone number. I still put in a message and hit lock, and... nothing changed on ADM at all.
Now my phone shows the stupid message every time I wake it up and every few seconds on the lock screen (I can still attempt to unlock the phone with the password and use phone/camera though), but ADM doesn't even give an option to unlock, just change the locked message. I can't even get rid of the damn lock by changing it to blank. I heard Samsung offers a similar service but I never made a Samsung account and apparently one is required to use it.
Beyond that the only solution I've found is wiping the phone (which I can easily do, because there's an option in ADM for it which presumably works), which I really don't want to do since I have a lot of pictures and data on the phone that aren't backed up that I would absolutely hate to lose.
To make things worse it appears that this issue is specific to my phone/the S7/Samsung phones/something, as I have my old Nexus 4 listed in ADM as well and going through the options for it I see it has the ability to define a password, but no such thing for the S7. I really have no clue where to go from here, tons of googling hasn't found me any method I haven't already tried or can't do.
I'd be so grateful if someone here would at the very least find a way for me to recover data before wiping it to get rid of the lock.
My brother died under mysterious circumstances and I'm desperate to find out anything else I can about it. I have access to his computer, and emails. I looked online and it seems you used to be able to unlock android phones with your google password, but it seems that is only for older Android.
I also read that you can use Google Find My Device and then unlock it there by setting a new pin, but supposedly this only worked up till last year can anyone confirm?
The nuclear option is to reset the phone, and I confirmed it does have a backup. But I'm really worried that option would leave me with incomplete data. Would it have backups of all his text messages over the last year? Would I be able to set a new pin? Is there any other method besides this I could use if the above two no longer work?
Really appreciate any assistance thank you so much.
So, I just went to a music festival and wanted to use my Mate 9 instead of my OnePlus 6t for recording. I did a format of the device and set up very few things to get it usable over the weekend - signed into Google and Facebook primarily. I did not enable developer options, or set ADB as I didn't think anything of it.
Got home, let it sit on my nightstand and upload photos to the cloud... FORGOT TO PLUG IT IN BEFORE BED.
It sat there, got tossed in a drawer while cleaning and the other day, I wanted to finish uploading the rest of the media. Plugged it in, charged it and powered on, only to get a pesky "PIN required when you restart device" even though the phone is actively recognizing my face.
I cannot for the life of me figure out the PIN that I set, and none of my videos uploaded from the concert, so I really don't want to wipe the device. I figured that there was some backdoor through Google that would allow me to log in, verify myself, and unlock the phone from the other side, but I cannot find anything.
Is there any way to recover or disable the PIN so I can get my stuff off? I've emailed Huawei, but they have yet to reply to me, and searching hasn't yielded anything helpful aside from "Do THIS if you forget your PIN to reset it" videos which show people just mindlessly wiping their devices.
Please help.
If have twrp then ur problem easy solve and wat firmware.
I don't have TWRP . It was just factory reset and I don't know what firmware. I didn't think I'd have this issue. I can't believe I didn't write the pin down. If I at least knew how long it was, that would help too. But as I type in potentials, it allows around 15 characters before telling me it's incorrect. I can't remember if this would mean it's that long, or if it allows you to type out past password character length
The only real backdoor is if you had gone in and decrypted the device at some point, in which case you might be able to use TWRP or the like to access /sdcard and extract the media.
Without that, all of the media is in credential encrypted storage, meaning that your PIN is absolutely required: the encryption key for the data is behind your PIN.
Your other options are pretty much to brute force the PIN, or give up on the media. I wouldn't be surprised if there are utilities out there for it assuming that the device was unlocked (and your PIN entry sounds like something that's close to AOSP, not EMUI, as EMUI exposes the length of the PIN, so it probably is), but they're not anything I've ever had to look for.
Yeah, so full story... I have a OnePlus 6t, but it records concert audio like crap. It's blown out and distorted. The Huawei was able to record heavy bass drops front.row by the speakers without any distortion. I dug it out of my drawer, factory reset it, loaded a few apps on for the weekend, and logged into Google and Facebook.
I did not alter many settings, turn on Dev mode, or enable ADB. I don't even know what version of EMUI or Android is on there because I don't know if it had any updates..
I was hoping that with the Android Recovery service, there was some way to select the device and reset the lock, with 2 step verification via OTP or something else similar. But the only option is built around the phone being lost/locked out, and not in the owners possession... Which sucks.
I'm still needing a way to get my media off of this device. Can anyone help?!
My girlfriend wanted to sell her mother's old S7 and I was tasked with wiping/resetting it. When the phone asked me for the password to the Google account, I thought "Don't try to trick a trickster, puny phone!" went straight into recovery mode and factory reset. Worked like a charm, I could create a new account, use playstore, phone ready to sell. So I went into recovery again, factory reset again and - fast forward a few days - the phone was sold and sent back, because after the 2nd reset FRP triggered and the buyer could not use it.
Main problem: The new account I created. I remember only [email protected] and the password.
Since it asked for _a_ previous owners login, I already tried gf's mother's, but that won't work.
So, is there a way to find out the test account? Otherwise, I found this method by tpierce89 to bypass FRP, but I guess at least I'd need the correct firmware to reflash, it says G930FXXS8ETC6.
Any ideas?
TehPels said:
My girlfriend wanted to sell her mother's old S7 and I was tasked with wiping/resetting it. When the phone asked me for the password to the Google account, I thought "Don't try to trick a trickster, puny phone!" went straight into recovery mode and factory reset. Worked like a charm, I could create a new account, use playstore, phone ready to sell. So I went into recovery again, factory reset again and - fast forward a few days - the phone was sold and sent back, because after the 2nd reset FRP triggered and the buyer could not use it.
Main problem: The new account I created. I remember only [email protected] and the password.
Since it asked for _a_ previous owners login, I already tried gf's mother's, but that won't work.
So, is there a way to find out the test account? Otherwise, I found this method by tpierce89 to bypass FRP, but I guess at least I'd need the correct firmware to reflash, it says G930FXXS8ETC6.
Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's the test account it's asking for, surely you can guess what it is? test account? test phone? test something?
Always sign out and remove the google account before any modification.
I'd be suprised if the method you've linked still works but you can try.
I tried all combinations I could think of. The thing is, I put in test and something as name and used the first gmail suggested.
Always sign out and remove the google account before any modification.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Will do in the future, but since I don't do these things regularly anymore, I wonder what they think of until the next time.
What puzzles me is, why could I log in after the first reset, didn't put in the password then and FRP didn't trip.
Well, it looks like we have to pay for unlocking, hope it won't be more than the price we took for the phone.
TehPels said:
I tried all combinations I could think of. The thing is, I put in test and something as name and used the first gmail suggested.
Will do in the future, but since I don't do these things regularly anymore, I wonder what they think of until the next time.
What puzzles me is, why could I log in after the first reset, didn't put in the password then and FRP didn't trip.
Well, it looks like we have to pay for unlocking, hope it won't be more than the price we took for the phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It depends on the firmware you had, some allow x amounts of factory resets before FRP kicks in. Its usually the network branded firmware which allows this.
AFAIK it was unbranded straight from amazon.de
TehPels said:
AFAIK it was unbranded straight from amazon.de
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well my advice is to turn off FRP lock, it's a nuisance. It's not like a theif is going to bring you the phone back because they can't use it. They'll just throw it away or use for parts.
cooltt said:
Well my advice is to turn off FRP lock, it's a nuisance. It's not like a theif is going to bring you the phone back because they can't use it. They'll just throw it away or use for parts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, to me it feels like you own your device another bit less.
Anyway, is there a way to get around FRP on that phone now? Or do you mean turn it off on new phones?
TehPels said:
Yeah, to me it feels like you own your device another bit less.
Anyway, is there a way to get around FRP on that phone now? Or do you mean turn it off on new phones?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sign into Google online with the same email and password your using on the device. Then device activity and notifications, then review devices. Select the phone your want to disable, then the red "remove" button. Sign out online.
Make sure sync is turned on, so the Google account can sync with the phone and turn off FRP lock.
Then after that to check. Turn phone off, press volume down+home+power to boot into download mode, read what it says about FRP lock in top left.
Then just reboot phone by pressing volume down to cancel download mode.
Other way is just remove Google account from phone before modification.