Tip of the Week: How to Wipe Sensitive Data From a Lost Phone

Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations are quickly approaching, which means dinners with friends and relatives as well as parties and festivities.  But, the holiday rush often makes us less cautious, so losing a phone is common at this time of the year.  However, we often don’t miss the device itself so much, rather the information stored on it.

If your phone is lost or stolen, you may want to remove personal data from your device so that it doesn’t fall into unworthy hands.  With Kaspersky Internet Security for Android installed on your device, it is easy to do.

1) Forewarned is forearmed.  Prepare your device for the worst-case scenario so that you will be able to remotely wipe all the data if necessary. Do the following:

1. In the main application window, open the quick launch panel and tap Settings.

2. Select the Anti-Theft component. Enter your secret code and tap Enter.

3. Tap Allowed commands and select the following checkboxes:

– Full Reset to enable the function to delete all data and fully reset the device.

– Data Wipe to enable the function to wipe the data remotely.

4. Now the function of remote management is enabled.

2) Let’s see what you should do if your phone is lost or stolen. To wipe your data via Web Management, perform the following actions:

1. Enter the https://anti-theft.kaspersky.com website under your Kaspersky Account you used for setting the initial configuration of the Anti-Theft component.

2. Select the tab with your device name and click or tap Data Wipe.

3. Select the type of data to wipe, then click Wipe.

4. In the Confirm the Wipe command window, click Yes. You can view the result of the command in the Data Wipe section.

It is also possible to wipe the data by sending an SMS command from any other phone.