How to hide your phone’s IMEI number from the lock screen — and why you should

Google’s been rolling out a setting to many Android devices that can make your phone’s IMEI — a unique, unchangeable number that identifies your individual device — accessible from the lock screen . This can potentially help you recover a lost or stolen device by providing easy proof of ownership, but because there are ways for bad actors to exploit an exposed IMEI, it’s also something of a security risk. Making your device identifier accessible from the lock screen is optional, though.