Don’t let the data on your phone fall into the wrong hands. Call your mobile and wipe it clean

When I think i’ve lost my phone, my first thought is not, “Oh no, that was an expensive handset!” In fact, the handset needs to be replaced at some point anyway. The real worry is about just what information I have on my phone that some nefarious criminal could exploit.

It’s time we get serious about anti-theft. You wouldn’t buy a car that didn’t have an alarm installed — and the same will soon be true for your phone.

There’s a new solution coming soon from F-Secure, called Mobile Security 5: [via F-Secure Press Release]

F-Secure Mobile Security introduces the new advanced anti-theft feature with remote lock, remote wipe and theft control functionalities. Remote lock can be used to lock the device to protect confidential information quickly and easily with a single SMS message. The theft control feature activates when the SIM card is changed by locking the device and sending the new SIM information to the owner. As an ultimate safety measure to prevent misuse, it is possible to erase all the data on the phone with remote wipe by sending an SMS message.

Of course, if you are going to be doing some dial and destroy, you might want to consider having your phone backed up. If you suddenly realize that you don’t know where your phone is, your first action will be to call it and kill it before it gets into the wrong hands.

However, what happens when you then find it in your other jacket pocket. You’ll want to be able to restore it back to its original state, down to the very last setting.

The future trend for this looks to be OTA (over the air, that is). Which means that we can look forward to a range of backup services from a range of players. the idea is that at regular intervals (like when you are sleeping) your phone connects with the great web cloud and creates a back-up copy of itself.

The handset makers want to offer this OTA backup as a way to keep you using the same handset (or at least the same brand of handset). The operators want to offer this as a serive that allows you to easily migrate to a new handset every year.

There is already an interesting third-party service, which only provides a limited backup of your contacts, but offers a glimpse of what is to come; check out ZYB.com:

ZYB backs up all the contact information on your phone to the internet. ZYB automatically updates your contacts, on the phone and internet, whenever you or your friends change or add information. ZYB shows you your contacts’ Social updates from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Hyves and blogs. ZYB tells you when your close friends are nearby…

With all your data synced with the cloud, you can destory your mobile with peace of mind. So backup, and get ready to initate self-destruct sequence…5,4,3,2,1…