Your phone.
Still yours.
When someone fails to unlock your stolen phone, Tambo photographs them, records where the phone is, and sends both to your email and your WhatsApp. The report reaches you even though the phone does not.
What actually happens when a phone is taken
Tambo cannot detect a theft. It detects the unlock attempt that follows one — and that is the moment worth designing around.
The phone is taken
Nothing changes on screen. Tambo does not react to the theft — it reacts to the unlock attempt, because that is the event it can actually detect.
Someone tries to unlock it
On the third failed attempt — the threshold you set — Tambo captures one still image from the front camera. The phone shows nothing.
The report goes out
Photograph, location, accuracy, time, failed-attempt count and IMEI, sent to your email, your WhatsApp and your trusted contact.
And keeps going out
Every position the phone manages to obtain is added to a trail. Offline readings queue on the device and send when a connection returns.
If they try to wipe it
A reset attempt triggers one final report with the last known location before Tambo can be removed.
What you get
Intruder photograph
One still image from the front camera after failed unlock attempts, stamped with device, date and time so it stands up as evidence.
Location trail
Not just the last dot — the whole route, with the accuracy radius and the source of each fix so you know how much to trust it.
Reports off the phone
Email, WhatsApp, and a trusted contact who still has a phone when you do not. Losing the phone should not mean losing the trail.
SIM change alert
If the SIM is swapped you are told, with the new number where the phone can read it.
Hard to remove
Device administrator permission means Tambo cannot be uninstalled without your PIN, and a reset attempt sends a final location first.
Silent by default
No icon change, no alarm, no warning. An anti-theft app that announces itself is one that gets uninstalled in the first minute.
What Tambo cannot do
We would rather you knew before you installed it. An anti-theft app that oversells is one bad recovery away from a one-star review.
Tambo does not recover phones
It produces evidence — a photograph, a place, a time and an IMEI. Recovery is police work. Never go to a reported location yourself.
Tambo cannot report what the phone cannot obtain
A phone that is off, out of battery, or with no signal and no GPS cannot report where it is. The last position it did obtain is already with you.
No app survives every factory reset
Tambo makes removal hard and sends a final location when a reset is attempted. That is why your IMEI matters as much as the app does.
Built to collect as little as it can
Tambo needs your location and one camera image to work at all. It needs nothing else, so it takes nothing else.
What we collect
Location, so a stolen phone can report where it is. One front-camera photograph, only after a failed unlock attempt. Your name, email and phone number, because that is where reports go. Device details and the IMEI you enter.
What we never touch
Your messages, calls, contacts or browsing. The photos already on your phone. Audio or video. We run no advertising SDKs, we sell nothing to anyone, and we share nothing with data brokers.
Three minutes to set up. Then it goes quiet.
Install, enter your details, confirm your device, choose who gets the reports. Then Tambo stays quiet until the day you need it.