Lost My Old Phone-Getting Finders Google Photos-Can They See Mine? HELP!!!

[davesnothere13]

OK-- this is pretty weird. I "lost" my unlocked Motorola S5 phone while on vacation in a foreign country.

I had my phone provider close my account and got a new phone.

I kept my old phone number.

1) I keep getting their pictures on my Google Images -- are they getting mine?
2) I see their contacts on whatsapp --- do they see mine?
3) If the answers to the above are "Yes" -- how do I prevent this?

thanks ........

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! The first thing you should do when you lose your phone is to use Google's Find My Device to remotely lock and/or wipe the phone: https://support.google.com/android/answer/6160491?hl=en

Next, change your Google password (and also turn on 2 step authentication, if it wasn't already on). That way, anyone in possession of your lost phone would immediately lose connection with your Google account due to the change in credentials, and would be prompted to reenter the password.

(this post edited thanks to input from @mr_master)

 

[ashune]

As B. Diddy said, you should use Find My Device to lock and wipe the phone. You should first use Find My Device to do this and then change your password. If you change your password first, you'll be logged out of the lost phone and you won't be able to remotely wipe the data.

 

[hallux]

As B. Diddy said, you should use Find My Device to lock and wipe the phone. You should first use Find My Device to do this and then change your password. If you change your password first, you'll be logged out of the lost phone and you won't be able to remotely wipe the data.

I agree with this.

Also - I suggest anyone that's lost a device go into their account using a web browser, go to Sign in & Security, recently used devices. Click the device that was lost and click the red button that says "remove" next to "account access". This will force sign-out from all your Google services on that device but I would do as mentioned above and do it AFTER sending a wipe command from the find my device feature.

For the OP - the reason you're seeing the photos from the person that found your device is because their photos are being saved to your account. Does this mean they can see yours? ABSOLUTELY. When you say you had your carrier "close my account", what exactly did they do? If they closed your account, wouldn't you have gotten a new phone number? What can you do to prevent seeing their photos (and them seeing yours)? Follow the steps above.

 

[B. Diddy]

You should first use Find My Device to do this and then change your password. If you change your password first, you'll be logged out of the lost phone and you won't be able to remotely wipe the data.

Good point! I'm going to edit my previous post to reflect that.

 

[B. Diddy]

When you say you had your carrier "close my account", what exactly did they do?

This is a very good question -- all the carrier can do is close your phone line, but that doesn't do anything to your Google account. The person who has your phone wouldn't be able to make calls if the carrier closed the phone line, but could still use the phone to access your Google account.