Do "lost phone" questions even belong here?

[alight]

Last night my friend left her iPhone 4 behind in a 7-11 restroom in Austin, where someone obviously thought it was a gift from the Smartphone Fairy and snatched it up. We immediately got T-Mobile to deactivate her line and SIM, but she didn't have Find My iPhone installed, so there's no way to wipe her phone to protect her data.

My question is, what are the odds a thief will accidentally brick a phone that's unlocked and has a tethered jailbreak? or is there no reason to worry about the contents of the phone?

 

[siurpeeman]

i'm guessing chances are the thief will erase the phone to use has his own or to sell. the best your girlfriend can do at this point is to change her passwords on her email and other accessible accounts on the phone.

 

[scaredpoet]

^^ This. And not just e-mail, but ANYTHING of hers that had a login, she should absolutely change the password on. Her iTunes/iCloud account, twitter, Facebook, netflix, any streaming apps, any banking apps, etc. All of it.

A dumb thief will just erase the iPhone and either use it for themselves or fence it. That's the best you can hope for. But the worst scenario is a "smart" thief who knows they probably get a bit of cash or free services (and make the previous owner's life hell) by exploiting any logged in accounts on the phone.

And when she replaces her phone, she would really turn on Find My iPhone, and set up a passcode to lock her phone periodically.

 

[Givmeabrek]

Was it unlocked to a carrier or just plain unlocked so that anyone can use it? If it is not passcode locked she could have a lot of work to do changing passwords etc.

Tough lesson to learn.

 

[alight]

Unlocked as in unlocked from a carrier - it just has a T-Mobile SIM card in it. Fortunately there was a passcode, even if I don't think it would be hard to guess if they tried! I told her to change her passwords, thanks guys. Makes me want to buy iPhone insurance ...