If we have lost or been stolen from the iPhone, the last word is still not said! Instead of panicking, it is still possible to recover it or, at the very least, prevent the thief or whoever finds it from looking at what's inside and using it.
In fact, data theft can be just as damaging (if not more) than the loss of an expensive smartphone like the iPhone; just think of the Facebook account, the email account or the iTunes account to buy music and applications, perhaps linked to a credit card.
In this guide we will show you what to do in case of lost or stolen iPhone, so you can intervene promptly and track down or block the lost device.
READ ALSO -> Anti-theft app for Android to control and lock your mobile phone remotely from your PC
What to do in case of lost or stolen iPhone
When you lose your iPhone you can use the function already included in the smartphone or Find My iPhone ; this function uses the iCloud service to track the iPhone at any time that still has access to a data connection (cellular data network or Wi-Fi) and can also show the last position where it connected to a network or to a telephone signal before losing the signal.
This system will not work if the Find My iPhone phone service is not activated on the device, if there is little battery charge, if the phone has been put into airplane mode or has been turned off, but with a little luck ( especially if we have blocked access to the screen with fingerprints or unlocking path) it will be possible to trace it within a few minutes of theft or loss.
Find my iPhone must be activated when the smartphone is still in our possession, so we act immediately when there is still no danger of theft or losing it (prevention is always better than cure); the menu where to activate the item is present in Settings -> Account and password -> iCloud -> Find my iPhone.
Within this menu we put the active check mark both under the item Find my iPhone and under the item Send last position .
In order to function properly, the iPhone must be associated with our Apple account, so that we can track its position at any time.
To obtain precise indications on the place where our lost or stolen Apple smartphone is present, we will have to make sure that the location services are active before the fact; to do this, open the Settings menu -> Privacy -> Location and activate the check mark on Location ; done this we scroll on the same page by tapping on the item System Services, where we will check if the check next to Find My iPhone is active.
To track down the lost or stolen iPhone immediately, go to the iCloud.com website from a computer, enter your Apple ID username and password and then click Find iPhone .
iCloud will attempt to locate the device on the map and, once found, will also show its possible movements.
By clicking on the icon of the last position of the iPhone you can do three things:
- Have the iPhone make a sound so that you can find it if it is at home or lost in the car.
- Set the phone to lost mode and then block access to the iPhone with a new code.
- Send the phone delete command to the iPhone, which will restore the device to factory settings by deleting everything.
The three commands will be available in a window in the upper right corner.
The first move to make should certainly be to lock the device and prevent the mobile phone from being used by strangers to make phone calls or browse applications.
The option to initialize the iPhone must remain one last resort, just in case you realize that there is nothing more to do.
First of all, in fact, you can try to follow the device via the GPS signal to find it and send a message to the phone with indicated contact numbers and numbers for those who find it, perhaps with the promise of a reward.
After using the Initialize iPhone command, no one will be able to use it anymore, except for its original owner who, if he finds it, can go back to using it by logging in with his Apple ID and account password.
In practice, until the correct credentials of the last Apple ID used are entered, the phone will refuse to work and even the Apple store cannot unlock it, since the lock acts at the bootloader level (i.e. the system that starts the iPhone, encrypted and uneditable).
A thief could do nothing, if not throw the unusable smartphone!
How to block iPhone IMEI
If now all hope has been thwarted and the cell phone can be considered really lost, it is also worth making a complaint to the police and blocking the iPhone at the IMEI code level.
In another article we have shown the instructions to find the IMEI code of the iPhone to lock it, even if you no longer have that iPhone in your hand, just recover the code from the box or from the Apple site itself.
What to do if the phone is no longer found
If you can not find the phone after having reset from iCloud, there are still some things to do also to really protect our privacy and prevent someone from having stuck their noses in our profiles or in our accounts.
We must therefore immediately secure all our data and change the password to access all the services and apps that we used on the iPhone: Facebook, Apple Store, Gmail / Google and so on.
It is also necessary to revoke the various applications that use accounts such as those of Twitter, Facebook, Google or others.
Twitter and Facebook (among others) integrate with iOS so in the settings of these sites you must remove the applications used on that iPhone and configured for automatic access.
To facilitate the task, you can see these instructions on how to check app permissions in Google, Facebook, Twitter and others accounts.
Particularly important to do this as soon as possible, immediately after using Find My iPhone.
Anti-theft alternatives for iPhone
If you prefer to have a more powerful application like iPhone anti-theft, you can disable Find My iPhone and install an app like Prey .
This app also allows you to delete the mobile phone memory via SMS (without necessarily being connected to the internet) and prevents the use of the iPhone in case you change the SIM card, preventing a thief from using it with his own.
We talked about it in the App guide to find the stolen or lost mobile phone .
