Smartphones are just like your desktop or laptop. You need to keep them virus free, back them up, and secure them, otherwise you will end up with lost or corrupted data.
There are a lot of ways to backup your Blackberry, but anti-virus protection and the ability to securely wipe your Blackberry if it is lost or stolen are features that are not found in many Blackberry applications. Fortunately, Lookout provides all three of those features in one application for free.
Once you download and install Lookup, it will walk you through a short setupwizard, which will create your account on the Lookout website. When you are done, you can immediately use the backup and anti-virus functionality directly from the handheld. Right now, Lookout will backup the contents and photos from your Blackberry.
Lookout also allows you to schedule automatic backups and virus scans, just like your typical desktop anti-virus and backup applications would. You can schedule them to happen automatically at times when you will definitely not be using your Blackberry.
Just remember to keep your device on, and remember that the backup requires a good network connection. Backing up photos takes quite a while, so if you plan to use Lookout as a backup solution, you may want to remove unnecessary images from your Blackberry.
Perhaps the most important feature of Lookout is its ability to track down a missing device. When you log into the Lookout site with the username and password you made during the setup wizard, click on the Missing Device tab to see your options.
Lookout can Locate your device on the map, send a Scream to your device (which is really a loud siren), or Nuke the device, and delete all of the data on it remotely.
When Lookout locates your device, it will send you an email with a link to a map of the device’s current location on the Lookout web site. The first attempt we made to use it provided relatively accurate results, but it took several minutes and a few attempts to work.
When you send a Scream to your device, it causes the screen of the device to flash and emits a loud siren. If you have password protected your Blackberry and someone steals it, they will not be able to stop the Scream without restarting the device by pulling the battery until they wipe the device.
This will draw attention to them, and hopefully help in the recovery of your device. If you suspect you’ve left your device somewhere, or even if you’ve misplaced it in your house, you can send a Scream to it and someone can locate it.
If you know you cannot recover your device, you also have the option of erasing everything on it remotely with the Nuke function. At least you will have peace of mind knowing that no one is walking around with all of your personal data as well as your device.
Lookout is an excellent application for something in beta, and it is currently free, so you should check it out. It will definitely help keep your Blackberry data secure, and is incredibly useful if your device is lost or stolen.
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