Do you feel tremendous panic when you realize your phone is not with you? Don’t worry as you are not alone! Maybe you’ve dropped it somewhere, or in the worst case, maybe someone has stolen it! Whatever the case be, you need to track your phone immediately if you wish to get your hands on it again! Tracking a cell phone is necessary, as it might hold a lot of sensitive information such as business contacts, bank details, your passwords, photos, videos, etc.

iPhone users
iOS has an inbuilt cell phone tracking tool – Find My iPhone. It will help you in tracking your phone relying on your unique Apple ID. Hence, either you need to memorize the password or you can take the help of any password manager. Also, make sure your iPhone has enabled Location Services.

• When you can’t track a cell phone, switch on a computer, visit “icloud.com/find” from a web browser and log in using your Apple ID. If you can find any other Apple device, simply sign in with the Apple ID and try to load up this device’s version of the app – Find My iPhone.
• Now, the next screen will show you a map pointing with dot marks where your iPhone is, along with other devices on which you’ve registered. It will also show you the last check-in record of the device.
• With this app, you can interact with your iPhone. Even if it is muted, a click on Play Sound will ring the phone.
• If you still can’t track a cell phone, click on the Lost Mode. It will lock the device and prevent any purchases by Apple Pay. Also, it will display a message for any person, who might pick your iPhone up!
• Erase iPhone is the last option! Even if you don’t get your handset back, you can be assured that your data is safe as this option will remotely wipe every single thing on the lost device. And if you’re lucky enough to get it back, you can restore everything from the iCloud or iTunes backup.

Android users
The Android version of “Find My Device” works in a similar way as that of an iPhone. Even if some Android manufacturers provide their cell phone tracker apps, just make sure the Device Location service is on and you can memorize the password of the Google account added on your Android device. As long as you have the password, you can protect your data.

• Whenever you want to avail a cell phone tracker, visit google.com/android/find from a web browser. Otherwise, get another Android device and open the app Find My Device.
• Once you sign in to the Google account, you will notice a map revealing your device’s last location. If you were logged in to this Google account last time you had the phone with you, visit Google’s main page, type “where’s my phone?” It will show the same result as the map.
• On this map showing page, you’ll get 3 options – to ring your phone even if it is muted, to lock everything so that no one can access any data, and the last option is to remotely wipe every data from it. Well, in the last case, if you don’t have any data backup, you are going to lose it forever.

So, losing your phone is not the end of the world. You can follow the above tips to retrieve it and even protect sensitive data on your device.