Before You Lose Your Phone Abroad: Set Up “Find My” and Backups First

Last updated: June 24, 2026

Losing your phone while traveling means losing your maps, contacts, and payments all at once — and it tends to be far more disruptive than you’d expect. The good news is that most of that pain can be reduced with a little prep before you leave. In short, there are four things worth doing ahead of any trip: turning on “Find My” (device location), strengthening your screen lock, backing up your data, and setting up a backup way to stay in touch. This guide walks through how to prepare before a loss or theft happens — not after — on both iPhone and Android, in plain terms.

Why setting up before a loss matters

If you wait until after your phone is gone to react, everything gets harder fast: you can’t track its location, an unlocked phone exposes everything inside it, and without your contacts you have no one to turn to. Set up location tracking and a lock before you leave, however, and even after a loss you can check the phone’s location from another device, or lock and erase it remotely. Whether or not you prepared makes a huge difference in what you can do afterward.

This matters even more abroad, where an unfamiliar place, a different language, and time-zone fatigue can all pile up and make it hard to act calmly. That’s exactly why it helps to take care of a few essential settings while you’re still home and thinking clearly.

The four settings to handle before you go

Here’s the big picture. Work through these four in order and you’ll have a genuinely practical level of protection against loss or theft.

Setting	Purpose	Rough time needed
Turn on “Find My”	Locate a lost device and lock it remotely	About 3 min
Strengthen your screen lock	Keep others from seeing what’s inside	About 3 min
Back up your data	Restore photos, contacts, and data on another device	About 10 min+
Add a backup way to communicate	Reach family or your hotel even without your phone	About 5 min

None of these need a special app — your phone’s built-in features plus a few notes are enough. Let’s take them one at a time.

Turn on “Find My” (iPhone / Android)

“Find My” lets you check your phone’s location from another device or a computer if it goes missing, and lock or erase it remotely. Before you travel, just make sure it’s switched on.

On iPhone

Go to “Settings” → your name → “Find My” → “Find My iPhone” and turn it on. While you’re there, also enable “Find My network” and “Send Last Location” so the phone is more likely to record its position just before the battery dies.

On Android

Go to “Settings” → “Security” or “Google” → “Find My Device” and turn it on. The exact name can vary by model, so if you can’t spot it, searching “find” within Settings usually helps. Make sure location services are on too.

Set up your screen lock and backups

With theft, the truly worrying part is someone getting into what’s on your phone — your photos, contacts, and apps. Take care of these two things before you leave.

• Strengthen your screen lock: Set a passcode of at least six digits, or use face or fingerprint recognition. Avoid easy-to-guess numbers like “0000.”
• Make a backup: iPhone to iCloud, Android to your Google account. If your photos, contacts, and notes can be restored on another device, your information stays safe even in the worst case.

It also helps to make sure you can recall the passwords for your important apps — email, social media, payments, and so on. To prepare for signing in again on a new device, keep a backup method for two-factor authentication (such as your backup codes) on hand too.

Prepare your communication and eSIM

If your phone is your only device, the moment you lose it you lose your way to communicate along with it. Before you travel, set things up so you can still reach people even without your phone.

• Keep contact details for family, travel companions, your accommodation, and local support on a paper note or a secondary device as well
• Save your emergency contacts in the cloud too (for example, in an email draft)
• If you’re bringing a spare phone or tablet, sign in to your messaging apps on it as well

If you use an eSIM for connectivity, keep the QR code or confirmation email for the eSIM you purchased somewhere other than your phone — printed out or as a screenshot — so it’s easy to set up again if needed. Note that Bloomy eSIM is, as a rule, data-only. You can’t make or receive voice calls with a phone number, and SMS isn’t supported. However, app-based calls that run over data — such as WhatsApp, Messenger, and FaceTime — work as usual. Since you can reach family through these app calls, it’s easy to keep a line of communication even without a phone number. If you specifically need a phone number or SMS verification, it’s wise to prepare another method alongside it.

If you’d like to choose data and duration to match your destination, you can search by country, data amount, and number of days on our eSIM comparison page (pricing and supported countries can change, so please check the latest details shown at the time of purchase).

If you actually lose your phone

With the prep above in place, you can act calmly if the worst happens. For the specific steps to take after a loss or theft — using location tracking, locking remotely, handling your eSIM, and reaching people or sorting things out locally — we walk through them in order in the article below. Reading it before you leave means less panic on the ground.

👉 Lost or had your phone stolen abroad? eSIM steps and how to prepare before you go

In summary: a few minutes before you leave buys peace of mind on the road

Loss and theft can happen to anyone, but what you can do afterward depends heavily on the prep you do beforehand. Take care of all four — “Find My,” your screen lock, backups, and a backup way to communicate — before you travel. As part of your connectivity prep, choosing an eSIM that fits your destination also makes it easier to check your location and stay in touch while you’re there. If you’re unsure how to handle any of this when trouble strikes, our FAQ is worth a look as well.

*The settings steps and feature names in this article reflect information as of June 2026. Names and procedures may differ depending on your OS or device version. For the latest steps, please refer to the official guidance from Apple, Google, and others. Actual connection quality varies with the local network, your device, and your area.