Apple picker Having your phone stolen is an unpleasant thing. However, Apple provides a great service Find My iPhone, thanks to which it is possible to find a lost or stolen mobile phone. One of our readers shared with us his almost detective story in finding a stolen iPhone:
The fact that phones have been stolen, are being stolen and will continue to be stolen is a clear thing. Everyone remembers their parents' advice to be careful with your belongings, because a thief is rarely caught. It's no better these days, the police are still blind to petty theft. I saw this myself.
It was Friday night when I was arguing with my girlfriend over iMessage (me iPhone 4S, she iPhone 4). She was with a friend in the center of Prague when she suddenly stopped texting me. I thought she was mad at me and I didn't address it. After a few minutes, an unknown number calls me, I expect it to be some kind of survey of the operator, I pick up already with an annoyed tone: "Please?" "Well, honey, it's me, my phone was stolen!" came from the other end. Of course, I immediately forgot about any quarrel and became a detective: "Where, when, how?" I get the answer: "In Újezda, about 15 minutes ago, and some guy with a golf cart just brushed against me and immediately got back on to the tram."
I immediately go to icloud.com, log in using her username (I know them because I created an account for her) and immediately see where the phone is located: Národní třída. I pick up the phone, call 158. I tell them what happened, the policeman asks me where I live. I answer that in Prague 6, Vokovice, I immediately got in touch with the local police station. So I call there. The Vokovice constable wonders why I'm calling there when it happened at Újezda, and the phone is now at Národní, but he doesn't send me to the "grove", instead he contacts his colleagues at "Národek" and gets back to me with more detailed information.
For now, I'm going on my way, I tell my girlfriend that the phone is on Národní, let her and her friend go there, but be careful. A policeman from Vokovice calls me on Dejvická to say that he spoke with the criminal detective for Prague 1, who specializes in petty theft, and that they will call me in fifteen minutes.
The whole way from Műstok to Národní třída, when I walked, I looked at people to see if I could see someone with a folding stroller. Find my iPhone showed me the location somewhere around the mall MY, quite inaccurately. I met up with my girlfriend and her friend and we waited for the police. After a while, they announced that they would be in front of "May" in a few minutes. We waited and I kept refreshing Find My iPhone, no change. The police arrived, we discussed everything with them, described the phone to them, that it was a black iPhone 4 with a cracked back glass and that it was in a white case with rabbit ears. The iPhone is on Find My iPhone it still didn't move, I tried the last thing I could think of - kill the app via the multitasking bar and turn it on again. And hey! The phone moved. Now it showed that he was in MY. We went with a criminal to "fuck" the shopping center, maybe his girlfriend will recognize him. In vain. The stolen iPhone then ran out of power because, just on purpose, the girlfriend didn't have enough battery that day.
We also tried all the possible shops around to see if the thief bought a charger, for example, but nothing. When one of the detectives discovered someone trying to sell an iPhone in the bazaar there, we all ran there excitedly. But it was an iPhone 3G. One of the criminologists had to take the "finds" in question to the station and discuss everything with them. The other criminal investigator stayed outside with us because he had learned that someone should return to the same bazaar before eight o'clock in the evening to sell the iPhone there. Unfortunately, he also had to leave us in the end, because they also found a laptop with the "finders". We waited until about XNUMX:XNUMX and then we gave up and went home.
We locked the sim card and I checked Find My iPhone all weekend. I added my girlfriend's email to my client and set it to send me an email when the phone comes up. But now there was a problem. By blocking the sim card, the thief with the iPhone will need to connect to wifi in order to locate it on Find My iPhone. Another thing I was afraid of was that the person in question would either delete the iCloud account because I didn't lock it for my girlfriend (instructions below the article) or that he would do a restore. In both cases, I would no longer be able to find the phone.
By Sunday, I had already given up hope that the phone could be found and sent a command via iCloud to erase the phone, which would mean that I would no longer see it on Find My iPhone even if it was active. This apparently failed somehow, and the thief was probably not aware that it was possible to track the phone, because on Monday morning he connected it to the Wi-Fi at the KFC on Národní třída, in a house nearby and at the Anděl tram stop. So I went to the police again, but there I learned that I should go to the crime scene, that the state police have very "truncated" powers for that.
On Tuesday, the phone appeared again, in the same place as the last time, and after a while it stopped being active again. So we went to the headquarters of the criminal police, only to learn after about an hour of waiting that it had not even been reported yet. We thought that a phone call was enough in the 21st century, but no, everything is done very carefully. So they sent us to the state police to report it. Which took about 3 hours in total, and the policemen were not very nice about it.
After a few days, Friday to be exact, it all dawned on me. From a psychological point of view, this is the so-called "Aha effect", when everything fits together. After all, there is a Mobile emergency service at the Anděl stop, so the phone will most likely be there.
My girlfriend and I entered the bazaar and looked with interest at the iPhones that were going to get beat up just like hers. We had one checked out, went down to her house to get the box and memorized the serial number. I then borrowed the phone in the bazaar, while trying it out at random, I delved into the information about the phone and the serial number matched. So I asked them if they would hide it there for me, that I would just jump to collect the money. We called the police, again there was some confusion about who should come and who can take it, etc. We were no longer at the police taking over the phone, because it took them a few hours before someone stopped by to pick it up. However, after a week of paperwork, the girlfriend got her phone back.
If the same has happened to you, I hope this article has shown you that you have almost the same options as the police, and it's up to you how badly you want your device back. You definitely don't have to leave everything to the police, but of course don't do it without them!
For those who haven't and are worried that it might, here's how to activate Find my iPhone and lock your iCloud account: www.apple.com/icloud/setup/
Turn on Find my iPhone
- If you already use iCloud, go to Settings (Settings) → iCloud.
- Make sure you have it turned on Find my iPhone (Find my iPhone).
iCloud account lock
- Go to Settings (Settings) → General (General) → Restriction (Restriction).
- Enter any code you like (but remember it, otherwise you will have to restore).
- If you open Limitations the first time, you may be prompted to re-enter for verification.
- Now tap on Accounts and tick Do not allow changes.
- It should now be impossible to open Settings (Settings) → iCloud ani Twitter, if you climb into Mail, contacts, calendars, your accounts should be grayed out.
- You turn off the restriction again in Settings → General → Restriction after entering the four-digit code of your choice.
question… what happens if I lock my iPhone remotely? Will fez fmi be searchable?
Yes, and now you can also use Find my friends
Oh. It should read, what if I give Remote deletion = final :-)
Apple does not allow searching for IMEI and IMSI, it aims... They want to sell
That was a drama... I almost stopped breathing in the middle :-D
I didn't know about that limitation and I would like to thank the author of the article thanks to which I increased the protection of my iP 4S
Cool! Congratulations to the reader for finding the phone... Find my iPhone is a great thing, I myself immediately activated it on my iPhone, iPad and iMac and check regularly if it's working everywhere... And thanks for the tip on how to lock the edits!
Pretty good article :-) If the thieves are iPhone illiterates, there's a decent chance :-) Anyway, the willingness of the police is worth spreading this article... Help and protect or Do it yourself? :D
Nice article with instructions, but I have one question. According to the instructions, we have forbidden the thief to turn off iCloud, but he can still restore immediately, or not?
If the phone is protected by a password, which can be activated via Find My iPhone remotely, you can't even restore without entering the correct password.
Yes, but if the thief is at least a little smart, he will do a restore immediately after the theft :-/ and that's the end... The solution is probably to have the code lock on all the time, then it won't do anything...
He can't, you put the remote lock and hello.
I didn't really understand that. Find My Phone is quite an application (the hundred green icon). so just hold your finger on the application and delete it with a swipe and that's it. Am I not right?
you don't have ;-) that application is just a client for the Find My iPhone service, which is part of iCloud, which enables the same as the web interface, i.e. to track the rest of your device... deleting the client does not disconnect the device from the tracking service - this is done right in the settings iCloud honor that can be locked
the application allows you to track OTHER iOS devices, but deleting it will not affect the ability to track the device from which you deleted it.
What about getting the iPhone into DFU mode?
That's the only way around it. But how many thieves have that knowledge?
It's a pity that there is still no lock against Restore, or the ability to search (assign) a phone by IMEI to an Apple ID. So it would definitely help if the Find My iPhone app was already part of iOS. Because now, if I'm not mistaken (I haven't tried), if someone "steals" the iPhone and deletes the app, the iPhone will no longer be traceable.
It's a little different. You can protect yourself against restore with a password, see the answer to Dyron. However, the application is used for finding, Find My iPhone is part of the operating system as one of the iCloud functions, so deleting the application will still have the service active. However, iCloud must be locked, see instructions in the article.
Even so, it would be great if Apple would push this more into the OS and allow the phone to be tracked via Apple ID at all times, no matter what is happening.
I have experienced that even though I have a blocked iCloud account and some application uses shortcuts in the settings, it is still possible to get there. It happened to me in BatteryDoctor.
shortcuts are blocked from 5.1…. it seems to me
Good article, just for the tutorial:
Even if you lock the settings like this, you can still turn off location services on the iPhone, so then FmiP kind of loses its purpose. They should somehow solve it in Apple :). But otherwise, congratulations on finding the phone :)
you can lock location services in the same way as your iCloud account
I was setting it up now, and even changing the Location Services settings can lock it, so I can't turn it off either. Thanks for the great tip!
great article with an even better ending! The police did not disappoint again :-)
Great, if I were a thief, I would write: great, I'll just do a restore and you won't cut your boots anymore :-)
Oh yes, embarrassing article, I was most interested in how the butcher has practice with tracking everything sheepishly because he made it a password :-)
What most people don't know is that you can watch even after the restore :) so you better not be a thief, it could be revenged on you :D
btw, with my friend, I know practically all of her passwords, just like she knows mine :) in a relationship where trust reigns, it's nothing special ;)
Hi, how do you set this up? They also stole my phone and I want to insure the new one as best as possible..
Great!!! I immediately set up my iPhone so that the thief could not disable Find My iPhone :)
I would also like to not be able to turn off the locked iPhone. But I would probably want too much.
See one of the first posts in this discussion :) no, he didn't want much ;)
Dude, that's a great article and thanks a lot for the info on locking the iCloud account, that's exactly what I needed and I didn't know how to lock it other than locking changes to location services, which I didn't want so that I wouldn't have to turn off restrictions for every app that wants to use location services it's like this, I change accounts at least. Otherwise, congratulations on finding an iPhone.
I wonder how it is when I only have an iPhone, but no other Apple product like an iMac. Then how do I get into that iPhone remotely?
After all, through the iCloud web interface...
Oh, thanks :) I didn't install it right then because it seems unnecessary to me when I have dropbox and I prefer to back up to an external HDD anyway, so I have no idea what it looks like :)
It's a great guide to pawnshops on how to behave so that no one spoils their business :-( .restor can be done even without full coding, which annoys users continuously when using it. But at least there is some hope, many of these pawnshop operators do not know how to control the iPhone .
and how does it work if I have set to delete the iPhone when entering the reverse code 10 times? :) does anyone know?
According to me, the device can be found even if someone restored it. It is practically pointless to use the device without an apple id and it has an unambiguous production number, and if I were to prove myself to Apple as a buyer (that is, I have a purchase contract where these numbers are written), it should be able to tell me what apple id is currently registered on my phone , which SIM card is currently there and also where the phone is located. I think that apple can completely control the device remotely, so if someone connects to the Internet with it, they could remotely turn on the GPS and tell where exactly the phone is.
Yes, it works :) I own 3 iPads and 3 iPhones in my family and I can see them all, and I can also see old iPads and old iPhones that I sold and I did a full restore before selling them, or if after this restore, a person does not put his account on find my iphone it's old and the phone can be found or a message or sound can be sent to it, even with a friend to whom I sold an iPhone4, we tried remote erasing and it worked :))) even though he had his apple ID there and didn't move his applications, he found my iphone and I ended up canceling his phone on the dial :)))))
nice story. The first thing a thief does is take out the sim card and turn off the phone, but ok.
Even so, the best comment: I was most interested in how the butcher has practice with tracking all the sheep because he made it a password :-)
… thank you for the article. I have a better experience with the Police. They stole my wallet, documents, etc., which someone found on the third day after the theft and gave it to me. I wrote an e-mail to the station that compiled it on 18/12/2009 and entered an e-mail read receipt and it arrived on 24/3/2010… isn't that great? Otherwise, congratulations on finding it and thank you for the instructions.
I also made sure with cydia applications that if someone tries to enter a password, it will take a picture of them through the front camera, save the location and send it to my e-mail + it won't turn off the iPhone on the locked screen :)) it's called iCaughtU for
So I locked that account too, and just like that, he connected through the computer and wanted to look for his phone.
What was my surprise when I found that the phone was OFFline.
So the question is - how do I get the phone to be visible again?
I entered to allow changes in accounts
Then I went down a bit and there I see that I have the rating set: United States (could someone please explain to me what this rating is and what happens if I put the Czech Republic?
Oh, and then I turned off deleting and adding apps just to be safe (just to be safe...)
I protect my phone with a code lock
PS I was told by O2 yesterday that I had exceeded my data limit and my speed would be slowed down - could this have an effect or not?
So I have recent experience with a stolen iPhone 4 16GB... My son was in Techmania in Pilsen yesterday and after three o'clock he calls from another phone that he doesn't have his. Since the friend also has an iPhone, they found out that the phone was still in Techmania for a while and then suddenly started moving away towards the main station. At that moment he called me and I didn't hesitate and set off in the same direction. Unfortunately, a short distance from the main station, the phone was switched off. I searched the place for a while to see if I could see anything suspicious, possibly discarded, and nothing. Then the phone registered in front of Beroun on the highway, which did not please me very much, it was clear to me that the chances of finding it were decreasing. However, I called Techmania to see which schools were on the trip and I was told that, among other things, there was one school from Prague, and they gave me a contact person. I actually called and the teacher promised that he would try to find out if there was an honest finder going with them. The phone didn't answer again, then it answered again in the Zličín area, so I immediately called the teacher where they are now, however, we learned that they were in Smíchov and that they were traveling by train, unfortunately, the phone followed the course of the highway. So I apologized for the unnecessary alarm and continued watching. Our iP drove down Prague and finally ended up in a forest area about halfway between Budislaví and Březina above road 135... In the meantime, I blocked the phone. In the end, I also went for a new SIM, so I blocked the original one and sent him a message where to send the phone, if the finder had any conscience. Well, in the early evening I went to report everything to the Czech police, where they entered the IMEI into the database of stolen phones. So whoever puts in a new sim will see a message that the phone is stolen... I probably sealed the phone's fate with that, so at least I spoiled the person in question's joy. I keep a tiny bit of hope for further localization because I have not yet selected the option to erase the iPhone. Maybe the person in question will still connect to wifi somewhere…. Oh, and if you know of someone who was from the specified location in Techmania on Thursday 26.4.2012/XNUMX/XNUMX (probably a school, I know there was a school from Písek, but it's quite far from the last signal..., so let me know :-) (hledamiphone @centrum.cz)
As a matter of fact, when a restore was made, does the old Apple ID remain in Finy my iPhone?
Hello, can I ask something, is this communication still active? :-) thanks Dominika