Essential Tips for Handling a Lost or Broken Phone While Traveling

Our phones are central to travel planning and coordination. They hold our itineraries, tickets, reservations, emergency contact numbers, mobile passports … essentially everything you need to travel and get home safely and on time.

Before our phones, we worried about losing our wallets or passports, but with our phones, those items are more easily recovered. Without our phones, we’re really stuck. 

There’s nothing like the sense of panicking that you’ve lost your phone to make you realize just how devastating that situation can be. Even if you’re careful and put basic security measures in place, access to just about everything (if you aren’t already logged into your computer), is now dependent on having your phone in hand. 

Preparing for the worst – a lost or broken phone – has never been more important.

Here’s how to do it before your next trip.  

Make a habit of backing it up

If you don’t back up your phone, there may be nothing to restore if you get it fixed or replaced. Some things, like the recent photos, could be lost forever, of course, but other things are more critical.

Luckily, it’s easier than ever to back up your phone:

• Instructions to back up iPhones
• Instructions to back up Android phones

You may have to check the specific device support to ensure that your phone is being backed up regularly. Typically, this is in the Settings. 

And that leads us to the next security measure.

Invest in a cloud service

You can set up your phone to regularly and automatically back up your data to a secure cloud service, like Apple or Google. 

Both services offer a small amount of cloud storage for free, but for most people it’s not enough. You’ll have to shell out a small monthly amount for a larger amount of storage space. 

Pro tip: Some mobile carriers also have backup options too, if you want to do a little price shopping.

Consider a secondary backup

If you’re especially concerned or have a habit of losing or dropping devices, you can back up your phone to your choice of cloud service and then to your personal computer or an external storage device.

This may be excessive for most people, but the more backups, the better.

Pro tip: Make sure the passwords and authentication codes/apps you need to log into your cloud account can be accessed outside your phone.

Implement ‘Find My’ for your device

These days, phones and other devices come with location-finding options. Make sure you’ve activated it and know how to access it from another device, like a tablet, for instance.

I always travel with my phone and a tablet. The tablet has my entertainment apps and digital books. If necessary, I can use the tablet to find my phone. 

See how to set up the find services:

• Instructions for Android devices
• Instructions for Apple devices

Pro tip: Before you trust it’s set up, ask your spouse or kid to hide your phone somewhere, then use your laptop, watch, or tablet to find it.

Pro-pro tip: Practice this with your partner’s phone, tablet, etc., too, and you can be the hero if they’re lost.

Share your location with someone you trust

You may also consider sharing your location (which is really your device’s location) with someone you trust. For many people, the point of location sharing is to ensure their safety. For example, if you’re heading out to meet someone new and you want to be sure someone knows where you’re going and when you’re expected to return.

It has the secondary benefit of helping you in case your phone is lost or stolen.

Friends and family sharing their real-time locations is a fairly recent shift. Google rolled out location sharing on its Maps function in 2017. Apply merged its Find My iPhone and Find My Friends into a single app called Find My in 2019. 

Remember, you can turn it off anytime, so it may be something you consider only when you’re traveling for example.

Implement these cybersecurity measures (even if they annoy you)

Way back, one complicated password used everywhere was all you needed. You could back up your phone and even locate it using an app installed on another device with that one special password.

Thanks to skilled hackers and scammers, however, those days are sadly over. Using a single password, no matter how carefully it is crafted, is a horrible idea. You don’t want to see a notification from your bank, log into it abroad, and realize your account has been drained thanks to Facebook or Tumblr getting hacked.

1. Get a password manager

Now that password management is a thing, you have a few options:

• Get a password manager (probably not LastPass)
• Write everything in a little black book
• Stay home

Which leads us to the next step.

2. Set up multifactor authentication

If you set up multifactor authentication that requires a text to your phone and you lose your phone, you’re out of luck unless you connect a second device (like a tablet) to your messaging app.

There are ways to get authentication codes even without your messaging app, however. If your authenticator app has a master password, save it somewhere safe other than your phone—just as you should do for your password manager’s primary password.

This way, you can get recovery codes that will let you back into your account even if you can’t access your first authentication method.

3. Practice

None of these excellent security measures are going to help you if you’re in a panic about a lost phone. Ultimately, your phone may not be as lost as you think it is, but if you haven’t used the Find My app on your laptop or tablet in years, you could waste a lot of time and energy.

Take a few minutes before your next trip to practice using all these tools.  

If all of this sounds like too much trouble, I assure you that for most people, it’s not too hard. And you’ll be very glad you did if the need ever arises … or very sorry if you didn’t.

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