I turned on these 3 Android settings, and stealing my phone became almost pointless

Source Domain: www.makeuseof.com

Did you know your Android phone can automatically lock if someone snatches it? Google has included many such anti-theft protections in its Android operating system and across OEMs to not only make it easy to locate your phone, but also make it more and more difficult to access, unlock, or format your phone when it’s stolen.

However, most of the advanced anti-theft protections are disabled by default. This is often because some of these features need you to log in with your OEM account, have biometric authentication enabled, and add a safe place like your home or office before you can turn them on. But once you enable them, stealing your phone becomes almost pointless.

Device protection

Android 16’s bundled security suite that hardens your phone

The latest device theft protection feature added to Android is the Device Protection option under Advanced Protection. Google bundled several existing security tools into one place with Android 16, and turning it on enables multiple protection features together.

Starting with Inactivity Reboot. If your phone stays locked for three days, it automatically restarts and goes into a fresh, encrypted state. That means a thief who keeps your phone powered off and tries to extract data later will hit a wall since it requires a PIN or biometric to access anything. It also enables intrusion logging, which stores encrypted activity logs on Google’s servers so you can review them later if your phone is compromised.

On top of that, Device protection keeps Google Play Protect always on and completely blocks app installs from unknown sources. It also blocks 2G connections to prevent downgrade attacks from fake base stations, enables Android Safe Browsing for live malicious-site blocking, and adds stronger spam filtering in Google Messages.

To enable it on Android 16, go to Settings Security &…

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