A new free Android app enables users to find their mobile devices and personal data when lost. Phound! – derived from the words Phone and Hound – helps find a lost gadget and keep any valuable information stored on it from prying eyes.
According to a survey of internet users, over a year, one in 20 consumers – and as many as one in six for some countries – have lost their smartphone or tablet as a result of carelessness or theft. Over one third (38 per cent) of users admit that their devices contain confidential data that they would definitely not want to fall into the wrong hands, including financial data (stored by 19 per cent of respondents) and login details and passwords for accessing email, social networks and other profiles (30 per cent).
Kaspersky Phound! was developed to prevent this happening. Phound! offers gadget owners the ability to control their devices and the data stored on them remotely, via the My Kaspersky portal. If a device is lost or stolen, users can quickly block it to prevent unauthorised access, as well as using GPS, GSM or Wi-Fi networks to find its position on the map. To make searching for the device easier, users can also take pictures with the front camera or bring up a message on the device’s screen.
If the telephone or tablet was lost at home or in the office, it can be found with the help of the Alarm feature – the device makes a loud sound and continues until the owner enters a secret code. As a last resort, the owner can use Phound! to remove all personal data from the device and the SD card remotely, including contacts, messages and photos, as well as perform a hard reset of the device, if required.
Alexey Chikov, Senior Product Manager, Kaspersky Lab, said: “For many users, mobile devices serve as storage for their most valuable and important data – contacts of friends and colleagues, personal messages, private photos and many other things. This means that today’s smartphones and tablets need the same security as a bank vault. However, unlike bank vaults, smartphones are small, portable and easily misplaced. That is why we created a solution for our users to prevent their mobile ‘vault’ from falling into the wrong hands.”
Kaspersky Phound! is available in eight languages from Google Play Store, the official app store for Android. Visit www.kaspersky.co.uk.
