Find your lost phone with Android Device Manager | Hacker News Reader

Find your lost phone with Android Device Manager

officialandroid.blogspot.com

37 pointssrathi27 comments

This reminds me of a rather interesting design decision I encountered with Windows Phone this summer. I'm still undecided as to whether it is a good design or not.

So, over the summer I was traveling through Europe and lost my phone in Italy. I have two factor authentication on for my Microsoft account so this was somewhat of a problem seeing as every way to authenticate myself was with the phone (text, email, auth/code app).

Then I remembered I could go online and locate my phone through some web-app on windowsphone.com. This seemed like a terrific idea. So I went there, and, unsurprisingly but disappointingly, was unable to login because that app was not excluded from two factor authentication.

It was extremely frustrating to say the least.

Google gives 10 emergency codes that you can keep in your wallet and use them to access your account in these kind of situations. Does Microsoft have a similar feature?

Not that I know of.

The real culprit of my misfortune though was that my trusted devices (which wouldn't require 2nd auth) got erased because when I got asked to do two factor authentication in the hostel's computer I clicked on the "I don't have access to my phone anymore" link (seemed very fitting!) which then let me change my verification options (e.g. add a 2nd email address that they can send a link to, rather than have them text me a code). This got me into a weird state (which I think they told me ahead of time but I went through it anyways) where it takes 30 days for these new verification options to override the old ones. You can of course cancel this - provided that you have access to your old verification options (i.e. phone in my case) :)

That's a good design for sure (prevents a hacker from changing verification options without me noticing). However, what is a terrible design, and I don't know if it's a bug or not, is that when you change these verification options it also decides to erase every single one of your already trusted devices.

This meant that now, instead of only being unable to login to anything on random computers (e.g. hostels) I was unable to use any of the MS services on my Surface which I had brought on the trip.

Thank goodness that this happened near the end of the trip and not the beginning. I was only left without email, skydrive etc. for ~2 weeks.

I disabled 2-factor auth on my Google account for the same reason: the only time I need to use it is when I'm not using my computer because I'm on vacation somewhere remote, and most of the time I don't have access to the network on my phone or I don't have any battery left...

Google Authenticator doesn't need network. Battery however is required of course.

I wish there was a Google Authenticator app for the desktop, so I could at least have a backup in case my phone gets lost/stolen.

The algorithm is published, so you could plausibly write one.

http://gauth.apps.gbraad.nl/

The layout is definitely mobile, but it works fine in a desktop browser.

1) That is an awesome feature, especially being able to ring on max volume when you've silenced your phone earlier. Given my phone is usually on silent, having friends call it to find it between sofas has never worked for me.

2) I hate it when websites hijack my browser's hotkeys. Google, Alt-Left goes back a page in your history in basically every browser I've used, why did you think it necessary to rewire that for Blogspot?

Thank heavens this feature has finally arrived.

People are sometimes surprised when I tell them this is _the_ number one most important feature to me. I sometimes need to give my little siblings a ride from/to their workplace -- it's a great thing to be able to use iPhone's 'Find my Friends' to see where they are so I know where to pick them up. Or to see where my significant other is if she's coming from a different city (and when she asks for directions, I can actually be of help because I know where she actually is).

Now, if only iOS and Android had better interoperability... so that I could use my iPhone's 'Find my Friends' app to easily locate my little brother's Android phone.

You could've used Latitude for that...well, until recently.

I think you still can but via the G+ application. It's a shame they butchered such an amazing feature just to try and get a few more people using G+.

I feel that not enough people realize that this has so many uses than just recovering a lost phone.

You could always use Whatsapp; it has a "Share location function" that sends your location to the other person (or group, if a group conversation) using GPS (if on) or your network-derived location (250-1000 meter accuracy).

Looks like Google is taking a cue from the many apps that provide a similar service like Android Lost[1]. I hope this is useful for recovering stolen phones but I've read reports that even with the MobileMe location of an i(Phone, Pod) the police don't necessarily go after it[2].

[1] http://www.androidlost.com/

[2] http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-14/the-cops-are...

Indeed. My wife an I were traveling in Brazil and her MBP was stolen.

We located the computer near Sao Paulo (and it was stolen in Maceio!) and talked to a computer repair guy who admitted to having it (though he ostensibly had "just given it back to the owner") even though it was just listed on the local equivalent of CL.

Of course the police wouldn't do anything... not that I blame them-- I certainly couldn't expect them to go searching some random LAN shop...

So this kind of location information is probably only useful for locating devices that are held by people who want you to have them back (ie you left it at a party or somethign).

My friend has had this work when his laptop was stolen, in Australia. He had a program that allowed him to interact with the system, find the MAC address of the wireless router, and use google's database to get an address. After handing the information to the police, they went there, and retrieved his laptop. He wasn't told any details about what happened to the person, probably due to privacy concerns.

That's good-- maybe there is hope after all...

Last year, my android phone was stolen and all I wanted was to remove the content or disable the phone remotely.

They claim it's possible in a control panel that lists all the android devices belong to you. But that control panel listed none of the devices I used. None of them.

When I contacted with Google, they never replied me.

I don't know the majority experience but each Google service works really buggy for me. The Youtube account I used for years were removed with all the content, I have two Google+ accounts that belong to same e-mail but I can't login to the first one, and almost all of the Google services except Gmail and Search is disabled for me. Yes, I enabled everything in the control panel.

I would never ever trust any Google service.

I just hope they add some of the great features that Cerberus has, such as taking photos with the front camera, and then e-mailing you the picture (in case someone steals it).

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lsdroid.ce...

Wow, finally a reason to buy Google Glass! Hope now they will deliver Google Car Keys₢

> There will also be an Android app to allow you to easily find and manage your devices.

???

You use an Android app to find your Android? I guess if you have multiple of them, but I hope they make it available others ways too.

This is to use it on a friend's device to find your device. Apple also provides a similar app.

So does this mean that Google is the last major Mobile OS development company to provide this service (behind Apple and Microsoft, respectively)?

What took them so long? You'd figure that it would've come quickly considering Google's emphasis on navigation.

Google's been offering this service for years, but only for paid Google Apps accounts:

https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/1235372?hl=en

Eh that's weak though. What's the rationale for holding this from non paying customers? It's not like anyone would pay for Google Apps because of this feature.

Maybe the fact that third parties had been providing this feature for quite a while now?

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