This article was published on January 4, 2016

Unhand Me kicks up a fuss when someone steals your iPhone


Unhand Me kicks up a fuss when someone steals your iPhone

When calamity strikes and your iPhone is lost or stolen, Apple’s own Find My iPhone is a good tool, but it’s only useful once you realize your device is missing. Unhand Me is an app that acts as a good first line of defence from the moment someone picks it up.

At its most basic, the app will cause a fuss when your phone is moved. By default it shouts ‘Unhand me, you beast!’ and then plays the sound of a bloodcurdling scream, but you can customize these alerts.

That wouldn’t be much good if you couldn’t be alerted to the phone having been moved, so you can pair the app with your other iOS devices so that you can be notified elsewhere. If you have an Apple Watch, you can get alerted from your wrist as long as you’re within Bluetooth range of a device that gets the notifications. The Apple Watch app also allows you to remotely switch Unhand Me protection on and off.

Unhand Me 2

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Digging into the settings you’ll find that Unhand Me can also tweet an alert that your phone has been picked up (including an approximate location). There are also settings for detection sensitivity, a time delay for the alert, and a perimeter of how far the phone should have moved before the alert sounds. I though I’d be dealing with something of a novelty app here, but it’s actually really useful.

Unhand Me costs $1.99 and if you’re a security-conscious iPhone user it’s worth paying with.

Unhand Me [iOS]

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