Pin code of death/Dead man's Trigger?

drunkmonkey

So I want to be able to put a kill switch on my Droid, basically if I enter a pre set code on my phone it'll destroy all data on the phone.
Is there any way I can set my phone to do that?

The high horse brigade

drunkmonkey wrote: »

So I want to be able to put a kill switch on my Droid, basically if I enter a pre set code on my phone it'll destroy all data on the phone.
Is there any way I can set my phone to do that?

With the Cerberus app you can do that by sending a text
https://www.cerberusapp.com/downloads
Download - Cerberus security

AllForIt

I just happened to be looking at this website today for my fone and I saw there is a code which will wipe it. You might be able to find your phone model there. Not sure if it goes further than a factor reset but I'm not gonna test it to find out


https://mobilespecs.net/phone/codes/LG/LG_G5.html

Del2005

drunkmonkey wrote: »

So I want to be able to put a kill switch on my Droid, basically if I enter a pre set code on my phone it'll destroy all data on the phone.
Is there any way I can set my phone to do that?

The only way to destroy data is to overwrite it. The best you can do with a PIN would be to factory reset it, but the data is still there till it gets overwritten

Del2005

The high horse brigade wrote: »

With the Cerberus app you can do that by sending a text
https://www.cerberusapp.com/downloads
Download - Cerberus security

You can do the same from your Google account.

DopeTech

Del2005 wrote: »

You can do the same from your Google account.

Yes. Just install find my device if it's not already preinstalled.

The high horse brigade

Del2005 wrote: »

You can do the same from your Google account.

Yes except Cerberus is not just a find my phone app, it offers more features like tracking your device, taking photos/videos from the front camera of a thief, recording audio, SIM checking as well as remote locking or wiping. I've used it because it was available before Google offered some of the functionality

Cerberus is a complete anti-theft application, the best protection you can get to recover your misplaced, lost or stolen Android device. It's not just a "find my phone" app or a phone tracker, Cerberus has many unique features that make it the perfect app to locate your phone or tablet, identify the thief and get back your device.

Install Cerberus and try it for free for one week, then you can buy a license for your account from within the app or from the web dashboard.

It has three ways to protect your device. These are the "3 heads" of Cerberus:
- Remote control through the website https://www.cerberusapp.com
- Remote control via SMS (text messages) from another phone
- Automatic alerts

REMOTE CONTROL

Remote control allows you to perform many operations on your lost or stolen device, like:
- Locate and track it
- Lock the device with a code
- Start a loud alarm, even if the device is set to silent mode
- Display a message that stays on the screen, and also make your device speak the message
- Take pictures, screenshots and even record videos, to identify the thief
- Get the location history, to see where the device has been in the past
- Wipe the internal memory and the SD card, to protect your personal data
- Record audio from the microphone
- Get a list of last calls sent and received
- Get information about cell phone network and WiFi network the device is connected to, and nearby WiFi networks
- Start a remote shell (SSH-like), to execute commands as if the device were connected to your computer with a USB cable
- And much more!

AUTOMATIC ALERTS

Cerberus can automatically perform actions when some conditions are met. For instance, it will send email/SMS alerts if the SIM card is changed (see the "SIM checker" section of the settings) and it will email you a photo of the thief when a wrong unlock code is entered (section "Automatic photo capture").
You can also set your own rules, see the "AutoTask" section! From there you can set geofencing (alerts when the phone exits or enters an area) and a lot of more automatic actions and alerts.

ADVANCED FEATURES

From within the app configuration, you can enable some options to make difficult for the thief to disable or uninstall Cerberus. Make sure to enable the "Device Administration" functionality and the "Protect device admin" option. Also you can block the Power Menu to prevent the thief from shutting down the device, and block access to the status bar in the lock screen, so nobody would be able to change the quick settings in Lollipop (Android 5.0) and later versions.

If you have rooted your device you can install Cerberus as a system application and get many additional features, including complete uninstall protection (Cerberus will survive a factory reset) and GPS auto-enabling when you start tracking the device. See the Help page on our website for more information on that.
The app works even if the device does not have an internet connection thanks to remote control by sms messages. Also, the SIM Checker feature allows you to know the new number to send texts to, if the SIM card is changed.

If you have an Android Wear smartwatch, make sure to check the "Wearable device" section of the app settings: you will find many useful and cool features

Del2005

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Yes except Cerberus is not just a find my phone app, it offers more features like tracking your device, taking photos/videos from the front camera of a thief, recording audio, SIM checking as well as remote locking or wiping. I've used it because it was available before Google offered some of the functionality

The OP wants to wipe their phone and Google does that for free. If they wanted to do the rest then could use Cerberus. But the best protection is a strong password on an encrypted phone because if it's easy to block phone signals if they want to access your phone.

banie01

Seems to me that the OP is looking for something a little more immediate than Cerebrus or Find My Phone.

More of an immediate privacy/protection concern where someone has possession of your handset and compels you to unlock it?

I know back in @2014-2016 I used to use an app called locker for this
I don't know what the current flavour is, or indeed how integrations work with Pie.

Everything seems to have moved to remote wipe, however if forensic security is important that's not the best option.

Using a cellebrite an interested party can clone the handset and attack the cloned data to force decryption without ever powering up the radios on the phone.

drunkmonkey

Exactly banie, it's what on the device I want made unrecoverable by anyone. Everythings in the cloud so not worried about what's up there it's if someone physically gets hold of the phone.

Del2005

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Exactly banie, it's what on the device I want made unrecoverable by anyone. Everythings in the cloud so not worried about what's up there it's if someone physically gets hold of the phone.

To do that the data has to be overwriten because deleting does not remove the data, and to be safe it should be done several times, so any program doing it could be stopped by switching off the phone. If you don't want someone seeing something on your phone then don't store it on your phone.

antodeco

You'd need to be looking at some form of corporate mobile security software such as mobile iron or Airwatch. That will sandbox the phone and it can be set whereby of a pin is entered in X amount of times, it will immediately wipe the phone.

Gazzmonkey

I keep my most sensitive data safe by creating a veracrypt container with a strong password, then zip it to turn it into a format the phone can recognise and doing that also let's me add a second password to the file. The downside being I need a good memory and a laptop with veracrypt installed to access any of that data.

the_syco

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Exactly banie, it's what on the device I want made unrecoverable by anyone. Everythings in the cloud so not worried about what's up there it's if someone physically gets hold of the phone.

Just check if the law of the country which you are visiting don't view this as obstructionist of justice.

Honestly, if someone knows that that data is on your phone, you can't stop them accessing it as it takes too long to wipe bit-by-bit.

I don't know much about truecrypt / veracrypt but I guess something like that would work for files.

If you're concerned about messages and call history etc., I'd get a Xiaomi / Huawei etc. with the feature where a different fingerprint logs you into a different OS user. No one would be able to see anything from your primary login.