Don't Be a Data Loss Victim: 3 Essential Tips to Protect Your Smartphone Data
Photo credit: Canva
Have you ever experienced the sheer panic of either losing your phone or forgetting your phone password and realizing you haven't backed up your phone in months? Months! Just think about it – all your cherished photos from the past six months, your old contacts, and the new ones you've painstakingly saved – POOF! Gone! What if your iCloud or Google Photos is full and you haven’t upgraded your storage, and your digital life is hanging by a thread? You may have told yourself that you'll get around to upgrading your storage or backing up your phone at some point soon, but it hasn't happened yet. The pain and agony of losing all that data can be excruciating.
Well, this happened to a lady I just met. Let’s call her Joanne.
Story 1: Joanne’s True Story, Late-Night Shenanigans
Walking to my car in the London Drugs parking lot, I met Joanne, who couldn’t help but dish out her whole experience to me. She had been travelling across Canada for the past 4 months taking photos and meeting new people, staying with friends along the way. Her iCloud storage had filled up before her trip began, and she hadn’t gotten around to increasing it, so she knew the risk she was taking without a way to backup her memories. She promised herself that she’d take extra care with her phone in her travels until she got around to backing it up.
Joanne had just arrived in town, part way through her trip. She explained that last night she was sharing a couple of glasses of wine with a local friend she was staying with, but for some out-of-this-world unknown reason, she randomly decided to change her phone password that night. In the morning when she went to grab her phone – she couldn’t remember her password. She tried and tried again, but her forgotten password locked her out of her phone. Oh, I felt so bad for her – she didn’t even remember her parent’s phone number. She didn’t even have the contact numbers or addresses for her friends she was staying with for the second half of her trip – where was she going to stay?!? When I met her, she was heading in to meet the phone technician who was resetting her phone to factory settings 😱 Poor Joanne!
Let's take a moment to empathize with the not-so-made-up stories that might send even more shivers down your spine.
Story 2: The Unforgettable Vacation
Imagine you've just returned from an incredible vacation. You've captured breathtaking sunsets, explored new places, and made memories that you'll cherish forever. But, in the excitement of your return home, you lose your phone somewhere along your travels, and you didn’t back up your new memories. Suddenly, the magic of your vacation is marred by the thought of losing all those pictures and videos. It's a heart-wrenching experience that nobody should have to go through.
Story 3: The Business Catastrophe
Now, let's consider a professional scenario. You've been tirelessly networking, saving crucial contacts, and collecting vital business information on your phone. It's your digital Rolodex and a repository of your hard work. But one day, it accidently slips from your hands and breaks, or worse yet a truck drives over it seconds later– hey! It could happen. The realization hits you like a ton of bricks – all those contacts, meetings, and business notes are on the brink of being lost forever.
And finally…
Story 4: The Family's Digital Legacy
In the digital age, we document our family's milestones, from your child's first steps to your grandparents' golden anniversary. Your phone is the custodian of these precious moments, serving as a time capsule of your family's history. Losing access to this invaluable archive can be emotionally devastating.
After meeting Joanne, I did some research and learned of a study published by PEW Research Centre, a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. They found that:
“59% of smartphone owners back up their phone at least every once in a while (although this means that 39% of smartphone owners never back up the contents of their phone.)”
We live in an era where our smartphones are an extension of ourselves. They hold our cherished memories, house important contacts, access to banking information, passwords, and serve as a treasure trove of information. Losing access to this data can be a nightmare.
So why do so many of us not backup our phone?
Well, I have 2 good hunches:
You have every good intention to back-up your phone, but honestly, life happens, and you get busy, and it gets added to next weekend’s to-do list. Maybe you want to clean up your data, so it frees up storage space, so you don’t have to buy more storage, or maybe you know how tedious it is to manually backup your data. In short: You don’t have a routine set in place to safeguard your digital data.
You haven’t committed to enable automatic backups to cloud storage because you’re concerned about how your personal data is collected and stored and might have questions like, “Who is taking care of my data” and “How do I know it’s safe?” and “Is there a way to save manual back-ups of my cloud storage?” In short: You haven’t discovered a way to back up your phone in a way that makes you feel comfortable.
Do you really need to backup your phone?
You probably already know the answer to this. The answer is a resounding: YES! A backup lets you pick-up where you left off – it lets you keep all your photos, memories, contact information, etc. If you need to start from factory settings like Joanne, a back-up will let you transfer all your information to a new device quite easily.
How often should you backup your phone?
Daily is a good habit! Because whatever memories you captured could be lost the next day. If not daily, then once a week is okay too, then you’d only lose 1-week of memories. You choose how much you’d be willing to let go.
Well, life happens, phones get lost, passwords get lost. How can we deal? Here are some lessons we can learn from Joanne’s experience to help ensure you never experience the agony of lost data.
1. Set Automatic Backups
The first and most crucial step to safeguarding your digital life is to enable automatic backups on your device. Both iOS and Android offer this feature. For iOS, you can use iCloud, while Android users can rely on Google Drive or Dropbox. Once you set this up, your phone will automatically back up its data regularly, ensuring you never lose more than a day's worth of information. It's like a safety net for your digital life.
If you haven’t set this up, you may be wary of how your data is stored and how to access your files. To give you peace of mind there, I recommend reading the Terms and Conditions when signing up to a cloud service, and then be realistic with how you want to backup and access your data.
If you decide to use cloud services, be sure to keep tabs on your storage limits, so you don’t run into Joanne’s issue: Either commit to increasing your storage limits, or schedule time to periodically tidy up your files.
2. Make Use of External Storage
Apart from cloud backups, it's wise to consider external storage options. This way, you have a local copy of your data in addition to the cloud, ensuring that even if one fails, you'll still have your precious information. You may want to periodically save your photos to your external hard drive, freeing up your cloud storage. I suggest scheduling this into your calendar periodically, say once every 3 to 6 months. I also recommend having 2 external hard drives that are encrypted: you can keep one at home and keep the other off-site such as at your parents’ house and swap them over the holidays.
Here's a portable external storage hard drive I’d recommend from Amazon.ca.
Storage for your digital life. Western Digital Black P10 Game Drive Portable External Hard Drive. (Photo credit: Amazon.ca)
3. Have a Regular Method of Updating Your Passwords
We all know that we should be updating our passwords regularly. But if we do it on a whim like poor Joanne, it can lead us to being locked out of our phone. Consider using an encrypted password manager that’s backed-up regularly or synced across your devices or keep a record of your important passwords in a secure place and remember to update your secure place when you update your digital password.
Conclusion
If you're one of the many who've procrastinated on these essential tasks, it's time to take action. I’ll be the first to tell you, setting these things up and getting to them can be daunting and can take time – a lot of time, but once you finally do it, you’ll have peace of mind.
The fear of losing your phone data is a universal one. We've explored stories that vividly illustrate the anguish of losing cherished memories and critical information due to a lack of backups. It's a situation none of us want to find ourselves in. But, by applying the lessons we’ve explored, you can ensure that this nightmare never becomes a reality for you.
Remember, setting automatic backups, using external storage, and having a regular method of updating your passwords, are your keys to preventing data loss. And beyond safeguarding your data, these practices will help you lead a more organized and stress-free digital life. So, don't wait for a crisis to strike; take action now and protect what matters most – your memories and your information.
With lots of love and gratitude,
Stefanie
