As fails go this is pretty epic. A 15-year old male has been arrested in the US on suspicion of stealing a pair of Motorola Droid handsets.
The teenager allegedly broke into a couple’s home in Wilsonville and took pictures using an Android phone he was about to steal.
Unbeknown to him, the couple had installed Lookout and Android app which remotely backs up pictures taken on a phone to the cloud.
By taking self-portraits the young thief ended up incriminating himself. It’s thought that at least one accomplice may have been involved as some of the pictures have clearly been taken by another person.
The Lookout app contains three security functions, ‘anti-virus’, ‘data backup’ and ‘missing device’. The anti-virus feature allows you to manually check for malware and viruses on your Android phone. Data backup was the feature used to finger the suspect but you can also use it to save all your contacts and images. So if your phone is lost or stolen, you can get all your numbers back. It took us about 3 minutes to back up all of our contacts and pictures.
The missing device feature allows you to search for your phone using GPS and network information. It locates your phone on Google Maps “within a 20 to 1000 feet radius,” according to the Lookout website. There’s also a feature which allows you to make your phone emit a loud noise.
Lastly, if you’re worried about your contact info and data getting into the wrong hands, you can also remotely erase all data from your desktop using the cheerfully named ‘Nuke’ function. Lookout is available now for free on Android Market.
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