Alert24 and Google's Find My Device: what each one does

Find Hub starts working after you notice the phone is gone. Alert24 starts working the moment someone touches it. Arm Don't Touch My Phone before you put the phone on a café table and anyone who lifts it gets a siren, a flashing torch and vibration, with only your PIN, pattern, knock code or fingerprint able to stop it. Arm Anti-Pickpocket before a crowded train and the siren goes off in the thief's hand as the phone leaves your pocket. Charger and earphone removal do the same when the phone is unplugged.

This is a different job from finding a phone. Many thefts are opportunistic: a phone left alone for thirty seconds, taken because it was quiet and easy. A phone that screams and photographs is neither. The alarms need no internet, no account and no Premium.

Here Google's tool is stronger, and it is worth being clear about that. Find Hub can lock the phone with your PIN, show a message and a contact number on the lock screen, and erase it completely. Alert24 has no remote lock and no remote erase. If your phone holds data you must protect, Find Hub is the tool to use, and you should set it up today at android.com/find.

Alert24's Remote Access, part of Premium, covers the other actions: ring the phone at full volume even on silent, see its last reported location, and take a photo with the front camera. Sign in at alert24.in or open Alert24 on another phone with the same Google account. The protected phone must be online, the app must be running, and Remote Access must have been switched on before the theft. Read the Find my phone page for the details.

Neither tool can talk to a phone that is switched off or has no connection. Google's Find Hub network can still show a last known location for some phone models for a while after they are turned off; Alert24 cannot.

Find Hub tells you where the phone is. It does not tell you who has it. Alert24 takes a silent front-camera photo when an alarm starts, when someone enters the wrong code on the alarm screen, and, with Intruder Alert on, after wrong attempts on the phone's own lock screen. Each photo is saved with the time and, when location is allowed, the place.

Mark the phone as lost from Remote Access and it takes a photo every time someone unlocks it, plus a photo at intervals. These photos appear in your account so you can see them from another device. Give them to the police with the location; do not go looking yourself. Read what to do when your phone is stolen.

Google's theft protection features add a third layer. Theft Detection Lock uses the phone's sensors to notice a snatch-and-run and locks the screen by itself. Offline Device Lock locks the screen when the phone loses its connection, and Remote Lock lets you lock it from any browser with your phone number. They need Android 10 or later and a screen lock, and availability depends on the model. Turn them on under Settings, Google, All services, Theft protection.

These features protect your data after the phone is taken. They do not make noise, do not take photos and do not stop the theft. An alarm app and Theft Detection Lock do different jobs, which is why we recommend both; the alarm versus Theft Detection Lock page goes into this in detail.