Have you ever thought of losing your expensive device or you are already a victim of lost or stolen Android device?
The expensive nature of some smartphones coupled with their small sizes have been the prime targets of thefts. This is not surprising considering the fact that some of these devices are more expensive than big-size laptops.

Your phone can also get misplaced and when in silence mode, no amount of dialing from another phone can cause it to ring.
All hope is not lost if you find yourself in one of these situations. I will explain to you how you can recover your lost or stolen phone using Avast Anti-theft App.

1. Download and install Avast Anti-theft App

You have to first download Avast Anti-theft from Google Play and install it. The strategy is aimed at setting up your device before the unknown time comes when you will need to find it.


2. Setup and enable the Anti-theft App

Follow the steps below to setup and enable the Avast Anti-theft App

Launch the app
Enter your name when the pop up window appears as this is to designate you as the owner of the device.
Setup your Avast PIN which is used to authorize you future access to the Avast toolset.


Setup your Avast account or your secondary phone number for recovering your PIN before enabling your PIN protection
If you have a secondary phone number, select the phone number option, else select Avast account option.
Enter a 4-6 digits PIN for access to all Avast application
Enter a friend’s phone number who should receive your SIM change notifications. This is to ensure that whenever your SIM card is removed from your phone, someone has to be notified. You can skip this if you don’t’t want it.


Whether you selected the option of using a secondary phone number or Avast account to recover your PIN, you will definitely set up an Avast account to enable you remotely control your device. So , from the pop up window, select setup Avast account


If you already have an Avast account, then sign in else register a new account.


Enter your email address and password to register. You can as well register with your Facebook account.
After registration, you will be required to set the SMS sending behavior of Avast Anti-theft. Check or tick the send SMS to Avast checkbox, so that Sim changes will be reported to Avast servers via SMS. Note that SMS charges may apply as this may be an international SMS. If you decide to skip this, then the anti-theft will use any available internet connection to report to their server
A dialog box will appear informing you that Avast Anti-theft has been enabled and the launcher icon will be hidden when your device is restarted. This means that for you to open the app interface, you will have to call your Avast pin like you normally do when you want to dial a phone number.


3. Explore the app interface and features

Having installed and enabled the anti-theft app, you can take a look around all the features of the application. Select Help to view settings, SMS commands and FAQ so as to see the capabilities of this powerful tool.



Select Advanced Settings from the main interface to configure actions for different protection behavior. The actions you set here will take effect when you start controlling your device from the Avast web interface by sending remote commands.

4. Track you device remotely by sending commands to it

The Avast account you registered when setting up the anti-theft app will be used to login to Avast web interface from where you can send commands to your device to track and locate it. Follow the steps below to send commands to your device.

Go to http://my.avast.com from your browser (with any phone or computer)
Sign in with your email address and password used for registration. Before signing in, make sure you have verified the email by checking your inbox or spam folder.
Select the device listed on the homepage. If you have more than one device, all of them will be shown for you to select which one to control.


You will be shown a  list of commands which you can use to remotely control your device such as locate, lock, siren, mark as lost, forwarding, etc. You can also use other commands such as wipe for deleting all the data in the device, record audio, take picture, get data, etc. The web interface has options for messaging, calling and sending SMS. Note that the actual action to be taken by your phone must have been set on the phone.


Also, your phone must have access to internet whether through mobile data or Wi-Fi for all the commands to reach the phone.

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