While foreign affairs minister Kevin Rudd was in hospital recovering from heart surgery, his wife Therese Rein entered the password on his BlackBerry incorrectly too many times and the device wiped itself. That high level of security is one of the reasons why BlackBerry remains a popular choice for government and enterprise users, but if you’re worried that clumsy fingers will lead you to accidentally lose everything, here’s what to do.
Go to the Options section on your BlackBerry (the spanner icon) go to Security and then choose Password. If a password is enabled, you can choose the number of password attempts you can make before the device wipes. You can’t choose not to have that option, but you can set the number between 3 and 10. The higher option gives you more chance of getting the password right, but still means a thief is unlikely to guess it (unless you’ve chosen a super-obvious option.)
We certainly don’t recommend not having a password on your smartphone, no matter what flavour, since it’s likely to contain lots of potentially valuable personal information. You also should be regularly backing up your phone to a secondary source (and on a BlackBerry you can automate that process with BlackBerry Protect so it happens over the air). Check out our guide on how to secure your smartphone to make sure your own phone security is up to scratch.
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