I had Free Antivirus and Security suit installed on a Nexus 7. 4.3 update was just installed. Activating app protection (and downloading the needed software), password was set and verified in two fields and accepted.
Immediatly tried to access setting only to be told the paswsord just entered is not recognized.
No recovery password used so now I am totlay locked out of all settings.
Any ideas?
Let me be more detailed about this SNL app that had bricked my tablet. During the password verifications and before I could enter in a recovery password, this SNL software skipped ahead claiming to be complete.
i tried to get to my settings or use the password I just enterd only to find my system locked and the password rejected.
Worse yet, i cannot even perform a hard reset.
This software is free for a reason. It fails and will brick your tablet.
I use to tell my customers to use not only the software from sophos, but their security blog and podcasts.
Not anymore.
Hi CarlT,
I am aware that this scenario is very unsatisfactory and disappointing for you.
Unfortunately, the app is designed that way that you cannot get rid of SMSec if you haven't configured a recovery password or a Loss & Theft password.
If one of these things were activated you would have been able to either use the recovery password or send an 'unprotect' command to the device.
As both options are not defined, the only possibility would be to perform a factory reset of the device.
For this reason a warning is displayed when configuring the app protection and not enabling the recovery password.
According to your descrpition, you have tried to access the settings right after you have defined the password and the app protection password you defined did not work.
As I am sure you entered it correctly, I would consider this a bug within our software.
Therefore, I want to ask you if you could tell us what kind of password you have defined?
Were there any special characters in it? If yes, which one?
If you could tell me as detailed as possible about your password you have configured, I could forward this to our developers so they can have a look at this.
This way, we can hopefully prevent other users run into this issue by providing an update for the app as soon as possible if necessary.
In the end I want to say sorry for the incovenience caused by this and for the late reply.
Best regards
Stefan
Just now I was testing SOPHOS Mobile Security software (as I now work on a Sophos partner) and almost had a heart attack. Ended up in this thread looking for a way to save my life (and my Motorola XOOM). My problem is that I don't have 3G in my XOOM (only WiFi) so I can't text message myself for the Loss &Theft app. Meaning is you have a WiFi only device SOPHOS security is not for you and it is sad.
But (a big BUT) you can configure the AppLocker to send you a recovery password (by email, etc) for you to insert using the "Forgotten Password" option in the AppLocker login screen. When enabling, SOPHOS app tells you not to do that because it's a security breach and blah blah blah but you can say yes and save that email as if your life depends on it. Well, your life doesn't but that of your device indeed does. =)
The problem was I did NOT activates the password recovery before I had set up the AppLocker, so I got desperate and insane and wanted to jump out of the window while cursing my security options. Then I had an enlightenment (I remebered stuff about crappy password managers from other software). I was almost sure that wasn't the case but I tried that anyway (what one has to lose?)... and it worked.
The thing is SOPHOS Mobile Security does NOT interprets special characters (such as $ or @). Yes, it sucks, i know that. So the thing I did was enter my password totally skipping the special characters I had in it. Then, as magic, my password that the app kept saying was wrong was finally accepted and I had access to the App again. So, as fast as ligthining, I had disabled that feature for good. Even though I have the option of the recovery pass by email, a AppLocker with a password of "blablabla123" doesn't fit well in my point of view. Maybe I'll use it for my Nexus 4, as I have the option of both the recovery email AND the text message not to lose my device for ever and ever.
Hope that helped.
Kind regards.
How can i configure the AppLocker to send me a recovery password? I use the Forgotten Password option, but the screen reads as following:
Enter Recovery Password _______________
[] Show Password
Choose a new App Protection password_____________
Is this the right screen?
Please let me know.
Kind regards
I found the solution to this problem and it is very embarrassing but, not for me.
For a company that constantly preaches to use complex password phrases, imagine my shock to find out that the Android software failed and locked my tablet because I was using a password that was too complex and too long during the setup. The program cut the password off to a shorter version, but didn’’’’t notify me of this nor did it stop displaying characters as I typed it in during the setup.
I am sure there is some excuse as to why, but this is something that should be documented don’’’’t you think? Just s quick notice that “our Android program only uses passwords of X characters long.”
The same thing happened when I tried to setup their UTM. A password of more than 8 characters for the admin account was accepted during the setup but rejected when I tried to login using it.
Knowing the limitation with their Android software, I rebuilt the system several times making the password one character less each time.
After some time, I discovered that if I went to a much simpler password under 8 characters, it worked fine.
It appears your own products are not up to using the recommend procedures you pass onto people and as recommended in general by security experts and companies.
You also do not document this.
Again, I know it is free software, but if there free software causes these problems, why would I want to use anything else you produce?
I have the same problem. I was not sent a password recovery code and now my mobile phone is locked. I can't do a factory reset, can't use wifi and can't download apps.
Is there really no way around this! I will never use Sophos again, free or otherwise. I don't trust it.
