collaborative post
There is always the same silent bargaining when getting ready for a family trip. Snacks, sunscreen, extra clothes, chargers, and at least three devices for each adult and child. Phones and tablets are now as important as passports. They have reservations for flights and hotels, maps, entertainment for the back seat, and all the photos from the trip.
All of that ease of use comes at a cost. An afternoon of fun can become stressed if you lose your phone at a theme park, if your child opens a banking app by accident, or if the Wi-Fi network at the hotel is broken. The good news is that keeping your phone safe while travelling doesn’t take much work. It only takes five minutes or less to do most of the important things that will help the whole family.
Before You Leave the House
On the safety side, one evening at home takes care of almost everything. Put this short list down, make a cup of tea, and gather the family’s electronics on the kitchen table.
Backing up and software
Update any software that needs it on all of the devices that the family will be using. Hackers already know about security holes that updates fill, and it’s much faster to download them at home on your own broadband than to try to do it on the hotel Wi-Fi. Back up each phone and tablet to the cloud or a computer once everything is up to date. If the pictures and contacts are already saved somewhere safe, it hurts a lot less if the device is lost or stolen or gets wet.
Keys and fingerprints
There should be a lock screen on every phone. Even though it seems like a no-brainer, family tablets and older phones that are given to kids often don’t have one. For every four-digit PIN, it takes two seconds to enter. Fingerprints or your face are even faster. The lock screen is the first and best line of defence against someone getting your personal information if your device gets lost from a restaurant table or a beach bag.
Especially important here are items for kids. Every holiday, kids often get lost, leave things on benches, or let a new friend watch a video on their phone. Parents who want to keep personal content away from others can make sure that only certain apps can be used on each child’s phone or computer before the trip. If you lock down messaging, email, photo galleries, and banking apps, a curious child or stranger who picks up the device will only be able to see what you’ve let them see. That set-up only takes seconds at home and keeps things from getting awkward when you’re travelling.
Tracking and wiping from afar
Turn on Find My iPhone, Google Find My Device, or the Samsung app that works the same way before you leave. You can use these services to find a lost phone on a map, play a loud sound to find it under a pile of towels, or wipe the whole thing from afar if it doesn’t show up. All three of them are free and come with the system.
During the Trip
The getting ready is done. It’s now down to a few habits that will keep your devices safe without getting in the way of the holiday.
Pickpockets and straight-up theft
Tourist spots are where opportunists hang out. People are very interested in how to keep their phones safe from pickpockets, which is a good sign. A few useful habits can lower the risk:
- Do not carry your phone in your back pocket or an open backpack. Instead, put it in a cross-body bag or an inside pocket that zips up.
- No matter where you are, never leave your phone on the table. It doesn’t take long to grab something quickly.
- Keep your phone bag in one hand while you’re in a crowded place, a market, metro station or queue.
- For kids, you might want to get a light-weight phone strap. It attaches to a bag strap or belt loop and makes it harder to grab.
| Situation | Risk level | What helps |
| A busy metro or market | High | A zippered bag, a front pocket, and a handle |
| Restaurant or coffee shop | Medium | Never put your phone on the table; keep it in your bag and carry it on your lap |
| The beach or the pool | Medium | A waterproof pouch and a hotel safe for your valuables |
| Ride at a theme park | Medium | Leave in a locker or put in a flapped bag |
| A hotel room | Low | Use the safe to store things you forgot in the room |
Hotel and public Wi-Fi
Hotels, airports, and coffee shops all offer free public Wi-Fi, which is helpful, but anyone can use it. Don’t use those connections to do online banking or enter card information. Anything important is safer on mobile data. If your family uses Wi-Fi to stream and make video calls, a VPN app will protect the link and keep your browsing private.
Quick tip: Go to your phone’s settings and turn off regular Wi-Fi joining. The device won’t be able to join to strange networks without it.
Kids and screen time in other countries
As long as you follow the same rules for screens while you’re away, that’s fine. Everyone stays calm when they watch a movie on their tablet during a long transfer or play a game while the adults finish dinner. Still a few things that should be checked:
- Check to see which apps can use the microphone, camera, and location. Take away the child’s permissions for things they don’t need.
- Turn off in-app payments. Kids who are excited tap “yes” faster than they can read.
- Come up with a rule for getting new apps. Sometimes, free games in foreign app stores come with adware or ask for too many permissions.
What to Do If You Lose Your Phone
Devices can go missing even when the utmost care is taken. It’s not as bad as it used to be to lose your phone while travelling as long as you’ve planned ahead.
Get on a different phone or a computer and open Find My Device. Make a noise if the phone is close by. If it shows a place you can’t get to, turn on Lost Mode to lock the screen and show a message with a phone number.
Tell the cops about the loss if your insurance company needs a crime report. Get in touch with your cell phone provider to block the SIM card so that you can’t use it for calls or data.
For devices for kids: Make sure that at least one adult knows how to log in to each child’s phone or tablet. No one’s idea of a great holiday is trying to remember a 10-year-old’s Apple ID password in a police station in another country.
Conclusion
Planning a family vacation is hard enough without having to worry about cell phone safety the whole time. The part where you get ready can be done in one evening. Set strong passcodes, keep the important apps locked down, and enable tracking for the device. Those steps take care of most of the risks.
Simple awareness takes care of the rest once you’re gone. Place phones in places that are hard to get to, don’t use public Wi-Fi for banking, and check the permissions of your kids’ devices quickly. It doesn’t take long and takes away one thing you need to think about while you’re making memories.