As a colleague recently discovered, losing your cell phone to a thief is a disheartening experience. If you ever find yourself in this situation, and in this case have had your smart phone (including an iPhone) connected to your companies Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 system you can find small amounts of solace in its ability to help you manage said device. It should be noted that recent revisions of BlackBerry handhelds, even without a BlackBerry Enterprise Server in your environment, can configure their device to sync over the air through BlackBerry Internet Services. These type of connections are not detected nor can they be controlled in the same way as a Windows Mobile or iPhone Active Sync style Over The Air (OTA) Connection. Lost/Stolen BlackBerry devices should be wiped by contacting your cell phone provider.
To manage and potentially remotely wipe your device you should
1. Sign onto your companies Exchange 2007 OWA interface and select Options from the top bar.
2. Then select Mobile Devices from the menu on the left
3. In there you will see the different mobile devices that are setup to sync with your account, their status and it will give you the ability to remove that device’s ability to sync, Wipe All data from it, and display the recovery password setup for that device. If you have multiple devices setup to sync over the air, you can disable/delete them individually.
4. If you select "Wipe All Data from Device…" you will get prompted with a confirmation dialog
5. Selecting OK will initiate the wipe, and then you should remove the device from your device list. It is recommended to perform this wipe before you contact your service provider because as soon as your provider disconnects it from the network you can no longer wipe it with this service.
As a note, your friendly neighborhood Exchange Administrator has the same abilities as you do in control of your device, the same rules apply. If you’ve canceled your service through your cell phone provider and disabled the device via their customer service, wiping the device in this way will have no impact. The device has be on the network and able to be contacted by the Exchange Server for the remote wipe to happen.
Enjoy, and I hope you don’t have the misfortune of needing to wipe your phone.
