Vodafone Protect has locked my phone

[lfc1977]

I swopped my phone last year and today I have turned on my old phone with the intention of transferring some pictures and videos from the old phone to the new. When I turned on my old phone Vodafone Protect has locked the old phone and I have no PIN to unlock it. I do not want to carry out a hard reset as I will lose all the pictures and videos I was intending to swop over. Please could you tell me how I can go about unlocking the old phone so that I can then access all pictures etc I need. Previous phone and current phone have both been with Vodafone.

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi,

As this is a security protocol to protect the phone their isn't going to be a simple workaround as such. 

One way is to insert your sim inside another phone and navigate to the Vodafone Protect pin reset page, and see if that works. 

I'm aware you do not want to lose information but a Hard Reset is the second option. How to hard reset can be found out by googling hard reset followed by the make and model of your phone. This could delete the information however. 

Vodafone wouldn't be able to reset it remotely.

May I ask did you not back up your information anywhere else. 

Sd card.

Online Vaults such as Google Drive , Dropbox or an internal Back Up system ?

[AnnS]

Hi @lfc1977

Vodafone Protect closed on 31st March this year and was replaced by Secure Net.  If you have forgotten your password and did not change this before the closure and wanted to access the service, you would have need to request a replacement before the date of closure.

If the SIM you were using has been changed to the new SIM you may have a problem getting the PIN in an alternative phone.  

Depending on the phone you are using, there may be content backed up to cloud and this may be worth checking.

[lfc1977]

Hi, thanks for your reply, I have just checked for any cloud back up and unfortunately I do not not have it for either the photos or videos on this particular phone. I have however managed to get the pictures off the phone simply by connecting the phone to my pc. It is the videos I really want to access as they are of my kids doing their first school productions etc. Do Vodafone have no obligations to sort this out, ie provide me with a PIN to unlock the phone, as it has been locked to no fault of my own. I never received an email to tell me that they were going to be swopping over from Vodafone protect to the new secure net system. 

[lfc1977 · Accepted solution]

All has been resolved with this issue. Took my old phone my local Vodafone shop based inside John Lewis at Cheadle. Many thanks to the guys there who were very helpful. They got a PIN code which unlocked Vodafone Protect then uninstalled the app. They also transferred the videos from my old phone to my new phone. Sometimes it just helps to get face to face help in a shop. Very happy that it has all been resolved. 

[BandOfBrothers]

Thank you for letting us know this has been resolved @lfc1977