Locked & Found: Lost phones are no more

Who hasn’t experienced that awful sinking feeling of reaching into your pocket or purse for your phone and finding nothing but empty space? Your mind starts racing immediately: Did you leave it at home on the charger? Did you forget to put it back after you sent that text at the restaurant? Is one of your workmates a secret thief? Nine times out of ten, you find your phone in short order and all that speculation proves to be groundless. But sometimes it doesn’t turn up so easily, leaving you to worry about all of your personal information falling into unscrupulous hands, not to mention the considerable cost of replacing your handset.

The new Locked & Found app from Best Buy Mobile’s Geek Squad Black Tie Protection plan should go a long way toward easing your mind when your mobile goes missing. Available free with GSBTP or on its own for $2.99 a month, Locked & Found essentially turns your phone into a pocket-sized fortress/homing device.

Here’s how it works
Once you’ve established your phone is missing, you can borrow a friend’s phone and send a text to yourself. Your phone will automatically lock itself and sound an alarm. If it turns out your handset just slipped between the couch cushions, you can identify yourself and shut off the alarm with no damage done. If someone else picks it up, your phone will automatically send a text to your online account with a link to a map of its exact location. If the finder happens to be a Good Samaritan, he or she can follow up with a text letting you know where you can pick up your handset – at the hotel concierge’s desk, say. They can even opt to ship the phone back to you, free of charge to either party.

Stop, thief!
Even if the person who finds your phone has less than noble intentions, Locked & Found has your back. You can preset the app to lock and report itself lost if anyone attempts to remove the phone’s SIM card or if someone dials too many numbers not in your phone book. Depending on your handset, Locked & Found can also use your phone’s camera to automatically snap a photo of anyone who picks it up, making for a handy bit of evidence should it come to that. Hope isn’t lost even if your battery dies while the phone is AWOL. Locked & Found will log the last location of your device so you can more easily retrace your steps.

OS friendly
With available support for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Mobile devices (Windows Phone 7 is in the works), Locked & Found may just be the most reliable, universal tool available for getting a missing handset back in the right hands. Stop in to any Best Buy or Best Buy Mobile location to see further demonstrations of this huge step forward in cell phone security.