Recover your lost cell phone with YouGetItBack.com

So many gadgets, so many opportunities to lose them.

Now enterprising YouGetItBack.com, a company based out of Ireland, is offering services to “mediate” the return of your wayward CrackBerry and many other phones, MP3 players and mobile gadgets. Even laptops.

They offer two services you may find helpful, one free and one requiring a single low-cost investment up front:

• Lost and Found Service: You purchase a security tag that’s placed on the back of your gadget. If an honest person finds it, they go to the designated website and use the security tag to notify YouGetItBack of their find. The company then notifies you. Tags run $9.99 US.
• Cellphone Superhero: A “clever piece of software that allows you to lock your phone remotely” if you lose it. It’s free and in beta.

They also offer to let you back up your cellphone data on their own secure servers. I prefer not to share my data with anyone if I can help it, but I have an iPhone and backing up is easy for me. So you may find YouGetItBack’s offer a useful one.

Of course, it begs the question: If the person who finds a lost mobile is honest, can’t they figure out the phone’s owner and just call them? Some phones make that easy. You can make it easier. Two methods that come to mind:

• If your phone has a splash screen that allows you to set the text that shows when your phone is on, change the text to “If found, please call” and your designated number. This probably goes without saying, but I will anyway because I live in gun-loving America: Be safe in the number you choose to offer (maybe not your home).
• Set up an ICE contact in your cell dialing directory. This is good practice beyond just retrieving lost phones. ICE stands for In Case of Emergency and it’s gaining traction among emergency and rescue teams, who know to check for an ICE contact in your phone in circumstances where you can’t speak for yourself. The idea is for you to save an emergency contact person and file them under ICE in your phone’s directory, instead of under their name.

YouGetItBack has this to say for skeptics: “Practice has shown that up to 75-78 % of items are returned by finders if it is easy for them to do so, and if it does not cost them anything. We make it as easy as we possibly can for a finder to get in touch with us after finding an item. As an added incentive, all finders of Yougetitback.com tagged items receive a small reward funded by Yougetitback.com.”

Would you use a service like YouGetItBack? Please leave a comment with your “why” or “why not.”