The developers of CyanogenMod have turned on their new secure service for remotely locating a missing phone or tablet or wiping all data from a device that’s been lost or stolen.
It’s called CyanogenMod Account, and it’s built into the nightly builds of CyanogenMod 10.1 and 10.2 from September 10th, 2013 and later.
When you flash one of the new builds, you’ll be prompted to create a new account at startup. You can enter an email address and password, decide whether to use GPS , WiFi, or mobile data to determine your location, and then you’re pretty much good to go.
After that, you can login to the CyanogenMod Account in a web browser to manage your devices, locate your device on a map, or send a remote wipe command. Additional features might be added in the future.
While this is hardly the first service to offer find-my-phone and remote data wipes, the developers say this solution is one of the most secure around. The source code is available for anyone to inspect and the CM team says it doesn’t have the ability to locate or wipe a device since you’re the only one who even knows your password.