Old phone stolen

Question

My old phone was stolen during a B&E. No SD card, no cellular connection, locked with a PIN. question: if pin is mis-entered multiple times and the phone factory resets, will my old text messages be viewable? alos- any way for me to remote wipe now or too late?

Answer 1

If it was an Android phone (I'm assuming it was) then your SMS messages will be wiped if there is a factory reset performed on the device. HOWEVER if you manually stored any messages onto your SIM card (and only if you manually moved them there and if the SIM is still in the phone) then those will remain on the SIM card and can still be viewed on the device. Otherwise, they will be wiped along with all other personal data on the device in the event of a factory reset.

Best bet to wipe your phone remotely if you have not installed any remote wipe software is Google Find My Device which is activated when you use your Google account on any modern Android phone. You can see the location of, ring, and wipe your phone remotely. While your phone has no cell service and could be wiped, you can send a wipe request which will wipe your phone on the off chance that the phone is connected to a network while your Google account is active on it. Then, the next time the phone connects to a network while your Google account is still active on the device if it was not already wiped.