Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Lost Phone?
The Lost Phone is a free simple tool to help find your smartphone if you ever misplace it. It was built using the Veriplace Location Platform, which lets you share your phone's location with the sites and services you trust.
What does it cost me?
Nothing. The Lost Phone is free to use. The service we use to locate your phone uses an occassional text message and small amounts of data. Your carrier's standard rates and charges apply. An unlimited data plan is recommended.
Which phones are supported?
At this time, The Lost Phone works with most Blackberry and Windows smartphones in the United States. Because this is a free service, the best way to test if your phone is supported is to sign up and see if it works.
Do you guarantee that you can locate my phone, or that I will be able to find it?
No. This is a free service and does not come with any guarantees.
How does The Lost Phone locate my phone? How accurate is it?
The Lost Phone gets your phone's location from a service called Veriplace. Location accuracy varies. It's often within a few meters. Sometimes it's up to tens of meters or, in some cases, hundreds of meters. Even at its least accurate, we hope the results can help narrow down your search or help distinguish, for example, whether you lost your phone on your commute or simply left it at home.
This site is not intended to be a real-time phone tracker. The location of your phone can sometimes be up to a half an hour old, even when it's reporting a location. If your phone is off or in a place where it can't report its location, it can be much older. Such scenarios may be if your phone is indoors, especially a large structure such as a parking garage, or if it is outside of your carrier's network coverage.
Who can see my location?
Only you. You are required to sign in before we display your phone's location and we will not post or publish the location to anyone else.
Why am I asked to log in to my Facebook account? Are my Facebook friends going to get messages about this site or my location?
We don't publish anything without your permission. We use Facebook Connect only to identify you for purposes of password protecting your location. Basically, we could make you create a new username and password just for our website, or we can ask you to log in with something common like a Facebook account. We chose to do the latter, because we think that's more convenient than having to remember yet another password for yet another website.
You can learn more about Facebook Connect at http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=730.
Do you store my location?
No. We do not store your location nor any of your past location history. After signing in to our site, we ask our location provider Veriplace, for your phone's last known location in order to display it.
Am I going to get any ads or anything? Do you sell my data?
No. We do not sell your location data. In fact, we don't store your location data, or share it with anyone other than you.
I'm not seeing location. What's the deal?
Your phone could be off, out of network coverage, or in a spot where it can't locate itself. There's also a chance that restrictions on your Veriplace account are preventing Veriplace from sharing your phone's location with our site.
How do I close my account or manage my location permissions?
The Lost Phone gets your phone's location from Veriplace. Go to veriplace.com to adjust your settings or revoke our ability to locate your phone.
How do I change which phone is registered with The Lost Phone? Can I register two phones?
If you want to register a different phone number, simply go through the registration flow a second time. Your new phone will replace the old one. At this time, you can only have one phone per Facebook account, so if you want to register two phones you'll have to have a second Facebook account.
How was The Lost Phone made?
This site was developed using free location APIs from the Veriplace Location Platform.
I have a question or comment. How can I get in touch?
Send us an email! You can reach us at: contact <at> thelostphone <dot> com