So you lost your life (cellphone)?

What do you do in the event that you lose your cellphone or it is stolen?

The first thing that you do not do is panic.  Panicking results in poor decision making which results in money and time lost that you may not have needed to spend otherwise, believe me, I just did this.
I was recently shopping with my daughter in preparation for the warm weather.  We were in Kohl's and had one of their carts with the little stroller attachment in the front and the little pocket for personal belongings inside the "shopping bag" part.

Long story short, I ended up leaving Kohl's and at the same time, abandoning my cellphone inside the shopping cart.  I went to the Old Navy store located next door, spent all of 15 minutes there, realized my phone was gone, and quickly returned to Kohl's to retrieve my phone from the cart.  The only problem was, my phone was no longer in the cart.  I asked around at the register where I made my purchase, I asked the customer service desk, and I frantically retraced my steps all around the department store.  All of this I did with my almost 3 year old daughter who was very tired and hungry in tow.  Needless to say, it was a terrible experience.  Neither Kohl's nor Old Navy were housing my phone and as far as I was concerned it was lost and gone forever.

If you are anything like me then you probably use your phone for just about everything.  The device has drastically evolved from a tool for verbal communication between two parties to an all-in-one task manager and life changer.  I not only make phone calls on my phone, but I pay all of my bills, manage my emails, update my blog, post to my Facebook, grade my students' papers, check on my grades, capture all of the best moments with my daughter on video and in pictures, as well as do all of my online shopping. 

 So, basically my phone had become my life.

After I realized that my life was gone, I went to my cellphone carrier with the earth shattering idea of having them track my phone using the GPS on it.  If Facebook, google, the government and Russian spies can take pictures with my phone, listen to my phone calls and access my pics, why can't my cellphone carrier, right?

WRONG

I ended up spending 4.5 hours there purchasing a new phone and changing my plan.  When I finally got home around 8:45 pm I had to spend another 2 hours changing all of my logins and passwords for every account I had ever signed into on my cellphone, starting with the ones that pertained to money and confidentiality agreements.

Great things started to happen after all of that stress and anxiety over the repercussions of having lost my phone:

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When did a device for communication become the center of our financial, social, and technological world?

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Steps to take if you do lose your phone:

1. Retrace your steps. Go back to where ever you think you could have been with your phone last.
2. Give a description of your phone, home screen or lock screen, your name and an alternative way to reach you to anyone who could possibly find your phone: employees at businesses that you visited through out the day, friends, family, etc.
3. If you installed an application to track your phone using GPS technology, long onto your computer and try to find your phone!
4. If you have any password sensitive material that would be easily accessible should your phone be found and unlocked, change all of your passwords instantly & call any credit card or banking establishments that might need to be notified of a possible leak in your account information.
5. Check back in with the places at which you stopped or the people to whom you visited through out the day to see if they have found anything yet.
6. Go to carrier and have your phone shut off so that no one else can make phone calls or use your data plan; possibly look into replacing your phone with either insurance or possibly points you have built up on a provider rewards program.

Good luck if you do lose your phone, I hope you don't have to go through what I went through.  Luckily, I was able to get the phone back with very little inconvenience to me and no loss of information or security.  

Below are some links to reviews of applications that track lost or stolen cellphones.  If you want to ensure your phone is not lost and gone forever, you can check these out!

goo.gl/oXsqlR

goo.gl/jhjiD5

goo.gl/469tZ5