Stolen iPhone

Battlefield Fan

Battlefield Fan

macrumors 65816
Unfortunately my iPhone 4 was stolen yesterday. The criminal did a good job by turning it off and only turned it on twice. I got a rough idea of where he lives from the short time he turned it on at home.

I'm going to contact campus police tomorrow to see if anything was turned in. If not I'm going to activate my old 3GS.

In the future is there anyway I can require a passcode to turn the phone off? Find my iPhone is an awesome feature if the device is actually on... worthless otherwise.

Also are there any other major steps I should take? I'm going to send out an erase command tomorrow after contacting police just in case it ever comes back online.
 
Not much more you can do.
Even if they cant turn it off they can just pop out your sim card so you still wont be able to track it.
Or shut it off and restore it.
 
Did you have a pass code set ? If so you could send a message to it to lock and/or wipe it as soon as he turned it on.
 
He can reset it, instructions are all over including on Apples website, without ever again activating the actual radios on the device.

Find m iPhone is really not intended to be able to locate a stolen device, only a misplaced one... The wipe and lock functions can protect your data, but recovering a stolen device is unlikely.

-t
 
If iOS 5 will have a feature where you would have to enter in a passcode to shut off the iPhone, I would be all over that update. Sucks that if you lose an iPhone, the person can simply turn it off even if you have a passcode on it.
 
vong said:
If iOS 5 will have a feature where you would have to enter in a passcode to shut off the iPhone, I would be all over that update. Sucks that if you lose an iPhone, the person can simply turn it off even if you have a passcode on it.
Click to expand...

What if they pop out your sim?
How you're going to track it then?
Find my iphone like said above is not lojack. It can help you find it if misplaced but its not a stolen phone recovery system.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A5313e Safari/7534.48.3)

Applejuiced said:
vong said:
If iOS 5 will have a feature where you would have to enter in a passcode to shut off the iPhone, I would be all over that update. Sucks that if you lose an iPhone, the person can simply turn it off even if you have a passcode on it.
Click to expand...

What if they pop out your sim?
How you're going to track it then?
Find my iphone like said above is not lojack. It can help you find it if misplaced but its not a stolen phone recovery system.
Click to expand...

Just because they remove a sim doesn't mean it's untrackable. The findmyi app is still enabled so it would work with any data sim + wifi
 
There are ways to get around todays current tracking software.

Best to be mad for a day or two and then move on!

No one is going to do anything as thousands of iPhones are stolen every week. I think the carriers make sure that Apple does nothing to stop a stolen phone from being "re-used" as they want you to use it on their network. If a carrier like AT&T really wanted to help they would block IMEI numbers but they have no desire to do so.

Apple could do this better, but they will not.:rolleyes:
 
Dangerous Theory said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A5313e Safari/7534.48.3)



Just because they remove a sim doesn't mean it's untrackable. The findmyi app is still enabled so it would work with any data sim + wifi
Click to expand...

It wont work unless they connect to wifi obviously:rolleyes:
 
@OP: I fell your pain. I hate thieves. Perhaps one day Apple or some other manufacture will create a security system that can't be abused by the government but could be used to track stolen phones. As for the thief, as they say: Hang 'em high....
 
dude if u send a wipe command then youll never get it back. Send a lock command and a message saying im on the way with the cops, id suggest u leave my phone on your pourch. If they use a diffrent sim as long as they dont wipe it then it will still tell icloud where it is. All it needs is data capabilities. Even a wifi will work. If they would just put a small amount of explosives in the phone with a blow the thief up command that would stop theft pretty quick! jk or at least give you the option to permenantly disable the phone
 
GElite said:
dude if u send a wipe command then youll never get it back. Send a lock command and a message saying im on the way with the cops, id suggest u leave my phone on your pourch. If they use a diffrent sim as long as they dont wipe it then it will still tell icloud where it is. All it needs is data capabilities. Even a wifi will work. If they would just put a small amount of explosives in the phone with a blow the thief up command that would stop theft pretty quick! jk
Click to expand...

They were smart and wiped it. Its been almost 2 months now and Find My iPhone hasn't found it.

I got a white iPhone 4 32GB a week or two after. Paid a lot for it. A week later I dropped it while ordering food and it smashed the front screen. That was with a bumper on. Paid even more for apple to fix it. I have the worst luck with phones. Its now in an otter box.
 
If you have the IMEI-number, AT&T should be able to provide the police with the exact position of the iPhone (using triangulation) along with the phone number of the SIM-card being used.
 
torbjoern said:
If you have the IMEI-number, AT&T should be able to provide the police with the exact position of the iPhone (using triangulation) along with the phone number of the SIM-card being used.
Click to expand...

But they won't.

While technologically possible, they never ever do this unless there is an emergency.
 
So what's the best protection you can have these days given the apps and technology available? I have Find my iPhone set up and password required after an hour. I installed Prey but it seemed to work better on my MBP than on my iPhone. Any other precautions we should all take aside from not leaving it somewhere that it can be stolen or lost?
 
torbjoern said:
Why is that? To ensure the privacy of the thief?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, lots of laws are made to protect people's privacy, and usually the only ones who need the protection in these cases are the criminals. You can thank the ACLU for that.

Anyhow, if done fast, find my friends/iPhone is an excellent way to keep track of the phone. A guy came into the Pct. I was working in one day a few months ago and said someone stole his iPhone. So he showed me his girlfriend's iPhone (I did not have one at the time, so this really amazed me) and it showed me the exact location to the point we were watching it move down the street on the screen. So we loaded him into a car and took a ride to where it was on the phone. The victim pointed it out the guy who stole his phone, and it was recovered. Bad guy got new bracelets. Good guy got his phone back.

But again, this only works when done immediately.
 
torbjoern said:
If you have the IMEI-number, AT&T should be able to provide the police with the exact position of the iPhone (using triangulation) along with the phone number of the SIM-card being used.
Click to expand...

Although in theory your right, the Telco's are not usually so helpful.
(It would take a moderate amount of effort on their part to do all this.)

What they may do is blacklist the IMEI-number so it can't be used again on their network with a new SIM , and on theory that can share this, so it can't be used on a different carriers network.
 
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