Update Oct 2023: Cerberus Anti-theft is back on the Play Store (link)!
The scenario changed a lot in recent years: in the past thieves used to just throw away the SIM card and sell the phone, nowadays - and even more in the future - stolen phones are mostly sold for spare parts, due to Factory Reset Protection. It is therefore critical to prevent the thief from shutting down the phone and track it down quickly. Also SMS commands are not as important as they were once, due to the almost global coverage of data networks.

The Play Store app has no SMS commands and has a slightly smaller set of commands and automatic alerts, due to Google policies, but you will still have the most important features to help you get back your lost or stolen device and of course have automatic app updates.

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Sorry, Google removed Cerberus Anti-theft from the Play Store with this explanation: \"Apps that cause users to download or install applications from unknown sources outside of Google Play are prohibited.\"

It all started in November 2018, when new Google policies forced us to remove a lot of useful features from the Play Store app, as you can read in this article: https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/01/05/googles-new-sms-and-call-permission-policy-is-crippling-apps-used-by-millions/

To give users an option to have a thorough protection, the Play Store app displayed a message informing that the full-featured app could be installed as an update from our official website. Apparently even that is not allowed by Google, so they removed Anti-theft from the Play Store.

At this point we will not bother to appeal the decision, since there is no way to publish an app that is satisfactory in terms of functionality on the Play Store. The development of Anti-theft will continue, and the app will be always available on our website: https://www.cerberusapp.com/downloads

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