NEVER EVER use Google’s Android Privacy Protection Password

I repeat! NEVER EVER use the Android Privacy Protection Password feature. It just cost me my every piece of information on my phone: my baby’s pictures from month 1 to month 9, my photos, my wife’s, my recordings and tons of other probably useful stuffs that never made it into dropbox or google drive.
Come to think of it, our mobile phones are our de’facto gadget for taking pictures and making audio and video recordings these days, so since I purchased the Tecno Phantom Z-Mini in February of 2015, it’s been clicks and reels of photos and recordings.
I even went on a class field trip recently and when I ran out of space on my camera, I immediately switched to my phone – luckily, I moved those files to my backup HDD, but unfortunately not the other files.

So, where did my problem start?

First, I bought a phone without a memory card. In retrospect, I remember not wanting to purchase a phone that did not support external SD Cards, but after having been directed to the fact that iPhone users (and current Galaxy phones) no longer come with external SD card slots, I felt for millions to be OK with this…then I’d be fine.

The second problem is this. I proudly declare how if I am stuck up at gun point and forcefully requested to hand over any of my password – and somehow this bad guy had a brain scanner, I would not be able to, not because I did not want to, but because I just cannot remember it. Yes, even if you scan my brain, you won’t find a single password. I deliberately use impossible password, and almost always have to reset my password before login into any account. I didn’t pick that up anywhere, it just became a “securi-geek” habit…until now.

Thirdly, Google! Yes Google is absolutely responsible for the situation I am now in and I am currently in discussions with Lawyer colleagues of mine in the U.S to evaluate the chances of either forcing google to unlock my phone, or pay commensurate damages for all the data I was about to lose.

When I was setting the “Find my phone” feature, at no point did google mention to me that I will never be able to recover the password in the event that it is forgotten. There is no option to reset password. All you find in the online android device manager are “Ring, Lock and Erase.” What google has failed to recognize is that people who have lost their phones generally are not in a state of mind as to remember a password that was set while they were sad, anxious, grieving or lost.

I do not know of any consumer-facing application that does not have a password recovery/reset option except this privacy password protection. In addition, if the password has been set from the android device manager page, then it could have been alphanumeric. Unfortunately again, the keyboard on your phone will only be in numeric mode when you try to access it. Ironic isn’t it?

I have spent the past 3 days trying to figure out how to get past the privacy password protection but even the guys at xda and hovatec all conclude that I will have to flash the phone – losing everything.

You have been warned. You can try other find my phone apps out there.

I will update on my success or otherwise of my case against the makers of both my phone OS and the android Privacy protection software/feature.