Rebooting not advisable for further SMS-commands?

Avast Mobile Security Avast Mobile Security for Android
1

Hi,

I was thrilled about the Anti-Theft module and all the possibilities it offers, until I simulated a battery removal by simply sending the SMS command “reboot” (after locking it), just to observe the behaviour of Anti-Theft after a restart. Unfortunately, I encountered 2 severe issues, which renders the software pretty useless in terms of the locking state:

  1. There is a problem with the Android-native SIM-lock, which starts first after a reboot. As long as the SIM is not unlocked, the phone (understandably) won’t get a signal, so it can’t receive further Anti-Theft commands by the owner i.e. whenever a thief or I reboot, my control is completely lost, at least in this phone state. As a consequence, the reboot command should be definitely avoided when you want to execute further commands.

  2. Of course, the thief may put another (his) SIM into the phone and unlocks the SIM. I didn’t try that with another SIM, but when I just unlocked my own SIM card after a reboot, Anti-Theft was completey unlocked, too! I would assume that this behaviour won’t be different in a situation where somebody else with another SIM unlocks the card, so the whole unlocking purpose seems to me useless because it can be bypassed with a plain reboot (battery out).

=> Is this behaviour a bug or a planned procedure where the owner just has to live with the fact that the new phone no. of the newly inserted SIM will be sent via SMS to the owner? Or maybe I don’t really understand the purpose of the locking function?

Thanks for helping out!

Edit:
Anti-Theft Version 1.0.1973
Rooted Stock-ROM for HTC Evo 3D

Edit:
On 2nd and 3rd attempt, the SIM-Lock-screen was shown first again and after about 5 seconds (was able to enter some numbers) the screen was replaced by the Avast Lock screen. I don’t know, if a quick unlocking of the SIM-Lock might deactivate the Avast lock-screen - which somehow obviously happened on my 1st attempt. Still, the problem remains that I’m not able to sent further SMS-commands after a reboot.

2

Hello,

to be able to communicate with the anti-theft installation you can disable the pin protection of your sim card. It’s not protected anymore - but you have to decide: protect the sim - or communicate with the device.

When a new sim card (that’s not on the trusted sim cards list) is installed, the device either locks - or not - depends on the settings you made.

the fact that the new phone no. of the newly inserted SIM will be sent via SMS to the owner?

the number of the new sim card is beeing sent to the “friend” you specified in the basic settings not the owner.

I hope I got your questions right and could help you comprehend the system.

Werner

3

thanks for your reply!
Didn’t consider to turn off the SIM-lock which is actually rather useless anyway when the phone is usually not shut down in daily use. Nonetheless, I still believe, it would be better to keep SIM-lock, while Anti-Theft automatically enters the SIM-Pin for the user (he may configure and enter the Pin in the Anti-Theft settings just like the Anti-theft Pin) after a reboot, when it was set to the lock-state before by the corresponding SMS-command, so that the phone is still protected when e.g. the battery has completely drained out and somebody starts the phone after reloading.

4

it is not possible for an app to enter the SIM pin automatically.