So you just picked up a new iPhone 3G. And put all your contacts and appointments in it. And loaded it up with your music. And showed it to all your friends. And lost it in a taxi on the way home from a bar.
Whoops. While there are plenty of insurance plans that might pay for you to get another phone, and ways to back up your data beforehand, YouGetItBack.com’s new “Cellphone Superhero” service goes a step further. It allows you to lock your phone remotely as soon as it’s lost, and retrieve vital data after it’s gone.
It’s actually a pretty simple system: you install the company’s software on your phone, password it, and carry on using their device. Should it get lost, you can log on to YouGetItBack.com and report it, which will immediately signal the service to lock up the device in question, preventing it from being used by whoever finds it. Instead, your friendly neighborhood cabbie will get instructions from the disabled phone to visit YouGetItBack.com (or call), where he can enter info from the phone and find a way to get it back to you.
On the off chance your friendly neighborhood cabbie isn’t so friendly, he can’t get into any of your personal data, and you can retrieve it all remotely through YouGetItBack.com. If you’ve paid for premium service, the site will also act as an insurance policy and pay for you to get a new one.
Although the YouGetItBack.com concept has been employed on sticky tags with unique IDs for quite some time, the “Cellphone Superhero” service just launched in North America. Buyers pay $20 for the software, which includes three years of service without replacement coverage.
