5 Things You Should Do When Your iPhone is Stolen or Lost

If you just lost your iPhone, consider doing these 5 things right now. Potentially one of them may help you get your iPhone back in one piece.

1. Enable Find My iPhone

In iOS 7 and above, Apple had implemented a security system on the iPhone to deter theft by allowing any iPhone owner to “Find” his or her lost iPhone.

This security feature is now a permanent feature on all latest iOS including iOS 12.

If you can’t remember whether your turned on Find My iPhone or not, go to the following website and enter your iPhone’s 15 digit IMEI.

https://www.icloud.com/activationlock/

When you get Activation Lock: ON, you probably have activated Find My iPhone before. This is good because you may be able to track the whereabouts of your phone. Apple has a full tutorial here on how to track it.

However, if you get the result Activation Lock: OFF, that means you haven’t activated Find My iPhone on the device before.

This makes it quite difficult to track your iPhone as the Find My iPhone feature is only designed to be activated when you still have the device in your hands.

Having said that, we can still help you enable it by using our partner’s exclusive Activating Find My iPhone / Activation Lock Remotely service here. All we need is the 15 digit IMEI of your iPhone and your iCloud account email address.

If you don’t know the IMEI, do check the box or your receipt.

2. Disable your iPhone

If you’ve enabled Find My iPhone, login to your iCloud account here and turn on Lost mode. By turning on this feature, you can enter custom message on the iPhone’s lock screen e.g. “This iPhone is lost, please contact me at xxx-xxxxx.”

You will also have the option to erase the iPhone completely.

The iPhone cannot be enabled or used in any way unless they have the password to your iCloud account.

3. Protect Your Data

The first thing you need to do is to try to change all passwords associated with the apps installed in your iPhone such as Twitter, Facebook etc. If you have an iCloud account linked to your iPhone, change the password too.

Call your carrier immediately to notify them and they will disable the SIM card. Most carriers in North America, Europe, Latin America, Australia and Japan have the ability to blacklist lost or stolen iPhones. Once it’s blacklisted, the iPhone will not connect on any of your country’s carrier.

4. Remove Apple Pay Cards

On iPhone 6, 6+, 6s and 6s+, users in the US are able to pay for goods and services using Apple Pay. If your iPhone is stolen, it may be a good idea to remove these cards from Apple Pay.

This can be done on via your iCloud account as well. This website provides a good tutorial on how to remove them.

5. File a Police Report

It’s highly recommended that you file a police report if you lost your iPhone. This may or may not help but you’re doing the police and community a big favour. The police will have data and trend on missing phones in your area which they can use to alert the community.

In a case when someone “finds” your iPhone and handing it over to the police station, the police may be able to call you.

These are just some of the best practices you can do when you lost your iPhone. Please be cautious if you were able to locate your iPhone as the thief may be extremely dangerous just like what happened to this Canadian person a few months ago.