It's the 20th of March. And, for me, it was supposed to be a time of celebration. The first day of Spring and I was looking forward to hot weather ahead. Happy day! Not!!!

My cell phone was stolen at work. At first, of course, I thought it was me. Where did I put my phone? I know it was here. "Has anyone seen my cell phone?" I looked in my car and everywhere else I could think of. I tore apart my back pack, nothing. So, slowly the sinking feeling when you realize, my phone got stolen sets in. I had trouble concentrating the rest of the shift. Luckily, the phone was encrypted except for my SD card. I logged on to my Google account and tracked the phone. It was not near by. It was stolen.

The next thing I did was to call security and see if they had videos footage of the area I was sitting at and on the time in question. They did. One of the officers came up to the floor and asked me a few questions. He told me he would be back after searching and looking at the footage. He came back after a while and told me he saw a person walk past my work station, looked over at my work station then walked back and reach into where I had my things and pulled back out. Unfortunately, due to regulations, the officer could not tell me very much. I was told that I needed to request the footage and determine what to do from there. I was very thankful of the help by the officer in helping me and informing me who I need to contact to get the footage.

Now it's wait and see. I'll take a look at the footage and probably file a report.

Totally sucks. Luckily I had an older phone that I can use for the mean time until I get another phone.

My advice:

Newer Android phones and iPhone are encrypted from the factory. HOWEVER,!!! (on Android) the SD card is not. The data can still be read if the thief takes it out of the phone and reads it from a PC.

To encrypt the SC card you have to "format as internal." If you do this, the card will be recognized as internal. And, the phone being encrypted, the data on the card will not be able to be read on any other device but the encrypted phone.

Here is a link for a step by step process to encrypt your SD card.

How to Encrypt an Android Device and Its SD Card to Protect Your Data