Anti-Theft software for Fairphone

Hi there,

i have installed Avast! Mobile Security on my fairphone because of its anti-theft features (remote lock and locate …). The program also should detect that someone plugs in a new SIM card and then give alarm. But it doesn’t even recognize my own SIM card. Users in the Avast! support forum say that dual-SIM is not supported because “Android does not provide APIs to handle dual-SIMs correctly to 3rd party apps.” But some users with other phones say that it works on them. Is there anybody who has tested this or another anti-theft app on a fairphone? What is your experience therewith?

Greatings Matthias

Hi @Frankenpfalz,

I’m using Avast and I downloaded the Anti Theft feature just now.
What exactly do you mean it doesn’t recognize your SIM card, do you have an error message? I just set it up and it seemed to work, at least I didn’t get any error message indicating otherwise and I have one SIM listed in the trusted SIM list. I’m just assuming it automatically refers to my first SIM card slot (haven’t checked that yet).

However I never used Anti Theft software, so I’m not of much help with experiences.

A colleague of mine is using https://www.cerberusapp.com/

@Kris_S
Yeah, it seems to work :wink: My SIM card is listed in the trusted SIM list, too. But the phone is detected as stolen because maybe the SIM number istn’t recognized correctly. I noticed that as I tested the locate-function with an SMS from another phone. And after an reboot of the phone i had to type in the anti-theft security code. And as a last hint: dialing the security code what normaly should start the hidden anti-theft app doesn’t work. How is that on your phone?

@Jerry
Does your colleague use it on a Fairphone?

@Frankenpfalz no he doesn’t (on a Nexus 5) but I understand it’s a generic Android app that should work on any Android device.

Thanks @Jerry but the Problem with avast seems to appear only on dual-sim phones. So wie don`t know if Cerberus would work on fairphone

Oh sorry, I didn’t properly read your question. I’m afraid I can’t be of much more help there. You could try to see if Cerberus has some sort of community platform (forum) where you can ask if it should work with dual sim phones or maybe mail the developers themselves.

Hi @Frankenpfalz,

just to let you know I still have this in mind, but couldn’t get to it yet. I actually wanted to try to locate the phone over my avast account online and saw that my account doesn’t show me any info on my phone. I see the FP1 registered as a device, but there’s no additional info available. But I guess that’s a different problem :smile:
Anyway, I’ll try to reconstruct what you did tonight after work and get back to you on how it worked (or didn’t work)!

@Frankenpfalz, isn’t the build-int Android Device Manager an option for you? It allows you to locate your phone, lock it and wipe it remotely.

@Jerry, that would possibly be the easiest solution but i don’t have an google account and don’t want to chance this. I’m doing well without but therefore have to make some compromise :wink:

@Kris_S, i’m looking forward to your report. thanks

So @Frankenpfalz, I have something to report! :smile:

I first had to reinstall both Anti Theft & Mobile Security. Cause I thought if I can’t even access it from online then surely something’s not right. So after installing it both again and reconnecting with my avast account I saw my phone under my devices online. I also saw details of my phone & it told me both Mobile Security and Anti Theft are installed. I successfully located my device online. I also succesfully enabled the Siren (this thing is very loud!). However, while it registers my phone, and tells me I have a valid SIM card and more phone information, I can’t see my telephone number, it just says “N/A”.
Now I tried sending the LOCATE command via SMS from another phone. The reply I get is “ERROR: The command is invalid.”. And for me too, dialing the security code does not result in opening the Anti Theft app. I guess this is because of the Dual Sim thing?

However, it works to control it from the avast account online, maybe you should try that?

1 Like

CyanogenMod allows to locate and wipe a phone remotely as well.

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How do you trigger it on CyanogenMond? (SMS, online, call?)

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Normally during setup when asked whether or not to create a CyanogenMod Account…

Thank you for testing it @Kris_S
The LOCATE command from another phone did work for me as I tried it once.
I think, the SMS commands only work if the phone is detected as “stolen” because otherwise everybody (or your friends) could at any time locate or delete your device without your knowledge and that would be an epic fail :wink:
Did you have to enter your security PIN after rebooting your phone? That would be an hint that your phone is “stolen”.

Avast online doesn’t work without a google account :frowning:

Oh right, that would explain it. I haven’t actually marked it as “stolen”. (I’m kind of afraid of accidentally blocking myself out of my phone) :smile:
But I will try that too :wink:

As for avast online. You don’t need a google account, I mean I have one but was never prompted for my google account from inside the app? What you do need is an avast account. It should be possible to register from the app?

Hi,

Mediatek released an SDK that allows to access the dual SIM feature

Perhaps somebody can try this out? This might also allow to port different other apps that are currently not working because of the dual SIM feature.

@Kris_S
for creating an avast account you don’t need google but when i try to connect the phone with the avast account an error message about problems with google cloud appears.

@keesj
Thank you for that link. Don’t know how to deal with it but i think i should mail this to the developers of avast.