My cell phone is always on except for the occasional reboot. Why does the antitheft site always show my phone’s device status as offline?
Thank you,
Richard
Hi richard_av.
An interesting question. I'm not sure I have a good answer. I find that it often reports my phone as being offline when it definitely is online. I had formed the opinion that it only checks occasionally. I assume it checks when you log in to the Anti-Theft website and then checks occasionally, possibly with the frequency set for the location checking. So if your phone does not have a good data connection at the point when you log in, it is likely to show that it is offline for the next hour (or whatever data period is set for checking). Might this fit with your experience?
I note that you say that it "always" shows the device as being offline which is definitely worrying. You could try and take a sneak peek to see if that checks to see if there is a network connection or you could try logging on to the website from the phone to see if that gets it to change its mind. If you are going to do such tests I would recommend that you try to do them using a good Wi-Fi connection so that you can be sure that there is a network connection there at the time you are trying.
I hope that is of some use. If you do try any further test please come back and tell us the outcome as I am far from convinced that I understand this apparently odd performance.
All the best.
Hello Mike,
My phone has connection to 4G or at minimum 3G at all times. I know that I receive text messages and phone calls without issues at home or work.
Using your suggestion, I signed into the antitheft.norton.com site which showed my device status as offline. My current location was off by at least a mile even though I have been home all weekend since Thursday evening since I had Good Friday off from work. I have GPS and Network enabled but not Wifi.
With my phone still in sleep or standby mode, I click on the Sneak Peek which showed my device as online. I click on Take Picture and after a few moments I got the error that it could not take a picture and to try later. I immediately proceeded to Take Picture again and it was successful. Strangely enough, I go both pictures.
When I click on the Find Device, the screen still shows my phone as offline.
As I was writing this reply, I was automatically signed-out of the antitheft.norton.com site. I signed in, click on Sneak Peek and the status is offline. I cannot take a picture and I get a message at the bottom of the screen:
"Device is currently offline. We will try to upload photo once the device is online."
I try taking another picture and get the message that a picture is pending. The device is still offline.
Then the screen refreshes with the new picture and the phone is online in the Sneak Peek screen and in the Find Device screen. However my "last known location" is still a mile off and the When shows 17 hours and 57 minutes ago!
The Location Frequency is set to 1 hour.
This does not match the FAQ stating "Also, each time you log in to the site, your location will refresh.".
The NAT website needs a find current location now instead of every hour. I add this to my request features for the NAT website.
Hope this helps Norton understand what I am experiencing.
Kind Regards,
Richard
PS: As I completed the posting above, the device status went back to offline for both Find Device and Sneak Peek. My Last know location is still one mile off and the When time has appropriately increased for the incorrect location.
Hi richard_av.
Thanks for the update.
I am also finding Anti-Theft less than 100% predictable. :-(
I note that you say that you have 4/3G and can always get messages and phone calls. This may not mean that you are getting consistent data connections. Both messages and phone calls use a different means of contacting your phone from the internet connection which Anti-Theft will use. So if the data connection is less than 100% you could find that when you logged on to the Anti-Theft site it would look for your phone and not find it "online". I am not saying that this is what is happening just that it might be what is happening. You might like to try enabling Wi-Fi if you have a good Wi-Fi connection and then see what happens but I cannot guarantee that even then it will work just as you would expect.
I note that you say that you have GPS enabled and yet you are still getting locations over a mile away. I therefore assume that you are indoors and probably not on one of the upper floors when you run the test. GPS can only do so much when indoors!
Thanks again for the feedback and good luck.
P.S. If you make a post you can go back to it anytime in about the first hour and edit or add to it if you want to. Go to the "options" button at the top right of the post and, if it is possible, you will see an "edit" option. Just remember that someone may already have read the original message and have a reply on its way back, so try not to change the general meaning of the message. ;-)
Hello Mike,
When I use other applications that use GPS, for example Compass and WeatherBug applications, they use the same GPS on my phone and they put me within 100 feet of my position when only using GPS and Network. However, Google Maps and Google Earth locates me correctly. Turning on Wifi did not change location of the Compass or WeatherBug applications. Same result as when I only used GPS and Network.
Even with Wifi turned on this morning, I checked AntiTheft Norton a few moments ago and it is still showing my current location a mile away which was updated two hours ago. With Wifi, I am now showing at a different location, however about 1 mile way.
I get email using Gmail on my device. Data is data.
To me, the Norton location results are very disappointing since if I lose my phone or it is stolen, I cannot reply on the locate device location which makes this feature worthless. How can Google Maps and Google Earth locate me correctly and Norton cannot? It is the same phone with the same hardware. The only difference is software.
Thank you,
Richard
An interesting post Richard.
Thanks again for the feedback. I know that Norton are listening. Let us hope that they are able to use your information to improve the performance of Anti-Theft. So that they can make the most of the information it would be helpful to know what country you are in. My guess is that it is the UK. Can you confirm that?
Better luck in the future, and thanks again for the input, which I am sure will end up helping others.
USA
Oh...
Thanks richard_av. I thought they had sorted out the location issues in the USA so it might be a local thing for you or it might be where your signal is coming from i.e. they are tracking the source of your signal rather than you. Still that seems odd with live GPS. I recon we will just have to wonder for the time being and hopefully it will improve with time.
Good luck and thanks.