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What happens if your iPhone gets stolen?

F

Fedmahn Kassad

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 24, 2013
109
0
New York City
Hey everyone,

I'm wondering what exactly my options are if my phone gets stolen. I recently bought an iPhone 5S unlocked, and am a little nervous about what happens if I'm a little careless. I haven't lost a phone in my life, even momentarily, but the past is obviously not an indicator of the future.

Here's what I have thus far:
- Activation lock is on
- Fingerprint feature is on
- Find My iPhone is on
- Email/iCloud account access is restricted on the phone

So how long might I have after losing the phone to locate it? Theoretically, someone just has to restore it in itunes and it's lost, right?

And how much does activation lock actually help?

Thanks everybody!
 
Since you have Activation Lock enabled they will not be able to restore your phone without your Apple ID and Password so all your data should be secure and the phone not much use to anyone which don't know these details.
 
Write down all the serial, IMEI blah-blah information on your rolodex.

When at a public places, always face your phone AWAY from the traffic to avoid the grab-and-run.
 
Turn off access to control centre from lock screen, otherwise the thief could stick in airplane mode and make find my iPhone useless
 
Your only option is to find it with find my iPhone which you have turned on already.
 
Fedmahn Kassad said:
Hey everyone,

I'm wondering what exactly my options are if my phone gets stolen. I recently bought an iPhone 5S unlocked, and am a little nervous about what happens if I'm a little careless. I haven't lost a phone in my life, even momentarily, but the past is obviously not an indicator of the future.

Here's what I have thus far:
- Activation lock is on
- Fingerprint feature is on
- Find My iPhone is on
- Email/iCloud account access is restricted on the phone

So how long might I have after losing the phone to locate it? Theoretically, someone just has to restore it in itunes and it's lost, right?

And how much does activation lock actually help?

Thanks everybody!
Click to expand...

Sounds like you have taken reasonable precautions. Now, just enjoy your phone.
 
Apple is top notch on this, but there are a couple flaws that need to be fixed and it would be completely useless to steal a phone then

1. Remove airplane mode from lock screen control center.

2. Require passcode or touch ID to turn phone off.

If they fix this it pretty much will deter anyone from stealing a phone as they can't disable it from being tracked. The only thing they could do is actually soak it in water so it shorts out. The phone may be dead but there plenty of people buying dead phones for $100+

Apple could also leave the hard reset feature as it is now since thr phone does reboot automatically.
 
Fedmahn Kassad said:
And how much does activation lock actually help?

Thanks everybody!
Click to expand...

Activation Lock locks every iOS device to an Apple ID and it all happen inside Apple's servers so it doesn't matter what happens to your phone.
The thief can try to erase it, restore it, DFU it,..... doesn't matter because at some point it's going to have to be activated again and at that point, Apple's servers will match it up to its corresponding Apple ID and require them to input the correct password.
 
Gjwilly said:
Activation Lock locks every iOS device to an Apple ID and it all happen inside Apple's servers so it doesn't matter what happens to your phone.
The thief can try to erase it, restore it, DFU it,..... doesn't matter because at some point it's going to have to be activated again and at that point, Apple's servers will match it up to its corresponding Apple ID and require them to input the correct password.
Click to expand...

Really?

So short of replacing the main board on the phone (or wherever device identifiers are stored), a thief would be able to do nothing with my phone as it is?

I feel a lot better about all this lol. It seems that stealing iPhones is generally a low-profit business given all the work someone would have to go through to make the device operable.
 
Shockwave78 said:
If they fix this it pretty much will deter anyone from stealing a phone as they can't disable it from being tracked.
Click to expand...

That's not really true... ultimately, anyone with a mylar faraday cage bag, or even a few sheets of aluminum foil, could block the phone from receiving GPS signals or transmitting/receiving data. That would disable it from being tracked.

Now, this doesn't disable activation lock, so a thief still can't reuse the phone as-is. But, it could still be useful to someone who wants to use the phone to sell as parts, or something along those lines.

I think Apple's pretty much done all they reasonably can to deter theft without making using the phone onerous for the legitimate owner. You can't stop everything, though.

OP: You're doing all that you can reasonably do in this case, so you're good. You may want to check and see if your renter's or homeowner's insurance, if you have some, will cover gadget thefts. Many do.
 
Turn on "Find my iPhone" and you're all set. They will not be able to restore it and, even if they were able to restore it, it would still ask for your Apple ID as soon as it boots up. Pretty nice feature really. :)
 
Since this is security-related topic, would like to hear anyone's thoughts on the "auto-lock" and "erase data" features in 5s.

I originally set "never" on auto-lock, after reading this thread I changed to "5 min" thinking it's dumb to lose my iphone without being locked or auto locked shortly. Am I on my right mind?

For "erase data", I can't figure out if it's absolutely necessary after all the protection settings you guys put out here are turned on?

Appreciate your thoughts.
 
L T said:
Turn off access to control centre from lock screen, otherwise the thief could stick in airplane mode and make find my iPhone useless
Click to expand...

That's a good one. They still can't do much but at least it stops them from disabling data if the phone is on. Then again they can just take the sim out.
 
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