I just lost my iphone? What should I do next?

[sometimewoodworker]

21 hours ago, watthong said:

Back home, I checked the "lost phone" and the find my feature was off. The battery had 20 percent left, would last one more day. Thank you all for all your advice and I learned quite a bit from this experience. Cheers,

That’s a great outcome. However, I hope the first thing you do is to turn the Find My on. With it on it it’s much easier to deal with it with it off. You just happen to be lucky.

[richard_smith237]

2 hours ago, sometimewoodworker said:

On 11/9/2024 at 6:02 PM, richard_smith237 said:

Sell it, where it gets sent to China, opened up, un-bricked and resold (or thats where most phones end up).

You clearly don’t understand the security and strength of the Apple lock process. There is nothing that can be done to unlock an iCloud locked phone. The only way to do that is to know the Apple ID and password. The only thing that a locked phone is good for is to strip it for parts. A locked iPhone mother board is worth around £4.00

 

Of course if you have government class money you may be able to recover the data

 

You clearly don't understand where nearly all stolen iPhones end up (Shenzhen, Guangdong, China)

 

 

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255110862?sortBy=rank

 

 

 

[watthong]

7 hours ago, sometimewoodworker said:

That’s a great outcome. However, I hope the first thing you do is to turn the Find My on. With it on it it’s much easier to deal with it with it off. You just happen to be lucky.

 

The thing is this phone's sim does not have cellular/data connection. Meaning It doesn't have wifi on its own. With find my on, my Apple acct does see it, but only at the last position when it connected to a wifi hot spot, which usually is my ipad. In short my find can only locates this phone when it is in my possession. Out of my reach, it goes "dark." However I guess I can "brand" it as "lost" so it will be locked whenever I want to, no matter where it happens to be? 

[scubascuba3]

The finder can usually do a factory reset and can use it after as normal, unless iphone is different to android?

[sometimewoodworker]

8 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

 

You clearly don't understand where nearly all stolen iPhones end up (Shenzhen, Guangdong, China)

 

Where they are stripped for parts was no part of my post. Nor yet is it of any particular relevance, that they may end  Shenzhen is certainly likely but the market for stolen iPhones as working devices is tiny due to the security features Apple implemented. The majority of iPhones have the “find my phone” enabled, this is virtually impossible to defeat and results in a brick unless you have the Apple ID and password 

 

This change came around 5 years ago and made iPhones a poor target for theft once its effect became apparent. They are still stolen but now are not value for risk.

 

Your claim that bricked iPhones can be unbricked was incorrect and the point of the post, it maybe that, that wasn’t clear

[richard_smith237]

4 hours ago, sometimewoodworker said:

Where they are stripped for parts was no part of my post. Nor yet is it of any particular relevance, that they may end  Shenzhen is certainly likely but the market for stolen iPhones as working devices is tiny due to the security features Apple implemented. The majority of iPhones have the “find my phone” enabled, this is virtually impossible to defeat and results in a brick unless you have the Apple ID and password 

 

This change came around 5 years ago and made iPhones a poor target for theft once its effect became apparent. They are still stolen but now are not value for risk.

 

Your claim that bricked iPhones can be unbricked was incorrect and the point of the post, it maybe that, that wasn’t clear

 

You correct, mostly, However, as I understand it, re-manufacture is a last resort, after attempts are made to recover iPhones through either: 

 

a) Spear-Pishing attempts

 

b) IF the 'Find My' feature is not turned on, then the device is not linked to the Apple Activation Lock, thieves or technicians can potentially reset the phone or change its Apple ID without needing the original owner’s credentials

 

 

So, if I'm not mistaken, much of what 'can be done' depends upon whether or not the 'Find My' feature is activated or not. 

 

In the case of the Op who asked....'what could happend to his iPhone  ?' (which did not have the 'Find My' feater activated) - the answere is, most commonly phones are shipped to China and 're-set'... when that is not possible, as you correctly point out, the are 're-manufactured'.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

17 hours ago, scubascuba3 said:

The finder can usually do a factory reset and can use it after as normal, unless iphone is different to android?

iPhones are indeed different to android devices. You can absolutely do a factory reset on an iPhone if find my iPhone is switched off but without that the problem is that if you actually manage to reset the iPhone (this is not trivial to do) it becomes a very expensive paperweight if you do not have the Apple ID that it is linked to. Without that it is totally useless.

The Apple security suite is remarkably robust and governments have the ability to spend the thousands or hundreds of thousands to probably recover the data however if you have used something like the 3 memorable word password then its likely to take them years if they ever can.

 

FWIW there are a couple of well known cases where it has been years and the phones data is still not available.

 

You can use the phone in a less secure way and for the majority it’s good enough, but for those who want security it’s quite easy and quite fool proof 

 

This is one of the reasons that iPhones are popular 

Edited Monday at 03:51 PM by sometimewoodworker

[sometimewoodworker]

17 hours ago, watthong said:

 

However I guess I can "brand" it as "lost" so it will be locked whenever I want to, no matter where it happens to be? 

You can do that, but even if you don’t do that you can also enable the wipe this phone after 10 failed log on attempts and or the erase this device option.

 

if you ever get it back once wiped you can restore 99% of the data if you have backup enabled.

[watthong]

9 hours ago, sometimewoodworker said:

You can do that, but even if you don’t do that you can also enable the wipe this phone after 10 failed log on attempts and or the erase this device option.

 

if you ever get it back once wiped you can restore 99% of the data if you have backup enabled.

 

I see "mark as lost" and "erase this device" options in find my. But I don't see the "wipe this phone after 10 failed log on attempts" option?

[richard_smith237]

6 hours ago, watthong said:

 

I see "mark as lost" and "erase this device" options in find my. But I don't see the "wipe this phone after 10 failed log on attempts" option?

 

Thats a feature on the phone itself, much like turning on 'Find My'... 

 

 

[khunPer]

On 11/8/2024 at 3:14 PM, watthong said:

I probably left my phone somewhere around the mall early this evening, or it might have dropped out of my pocket inside the taxi on the way home. I only used it for the sim card, no banking or monetary app opened on it. I guess in the ios ecosystem, it is connected via find my iphone feature with other ipads/iphones I have at home, thought I don't know how to use it beside turning the feature on and off.
The sim card is on my bank records so I guess I need to alert the banks on that. Anything else I should do? Any way to trace it? Important details: it has both numeric and touchid passcode on it so I don't think anyone else can use it? Am I correct?
Thank you in advance for your advice. Much appreciated.

Report it to the police and get a receipt of reporting it.

With a receipt from police you can close the SIM-card and get a new one with the same number.

When, or if, your phone shows up again, you can just change SIM-card, if you haven't bought a new phone meanwhile.

[Bruce Aussie Chiang Mai]

On 11/9/2024 at 12:44 AM, watthong said:

I probably left my phone somewhere around the mall early this evening, or it might have dropped out of my pocket inside the taxi on the way home. I only used it for the sim card, no banking or monetary app opened on it. I guess in the ios ecosystem, it is connected via find my iphone feature with other ipads/iphones I have at home, thought I don't know how to use it beside turning the feature on and off.
The sim card is on my bank records so I guess I need to alert the banks on that. Anything else I should do? Any way to trace it? Important details: it has both numeric and touchid passcode on it so I don't think anyone else can use it? Am I correct?
Thank you in advance for your advice. Much appreciated.

Buy an Android phone

[sometimewoodworker]

8 hours ago, watthong said:

 

I see "mark as lost" and "erase this device" options in find my. But I don't see the "wipe this phone after 10 failed log on attempts" option?

It is under “faceID/touchID. & passcode” and is .Erase  Data after 10 failed attempts   there is also another security measure that is Stolen device protection this adds security if you are away from a known location like home or work. 

[sometimewoodworker]

45 minutes ago, Bruce Aussie Chiang Mai said:

Buy an Android phone

Do shill your c*r*a*p on somewhere that is not the Apple Products forum

 

[dlclark97]

On 11/8/2024 at 9:14 PM, watthong said:

I probably left my phone somewhere around the mall early this evening, or it might have dropped out of my pocket inside the taxi on the way home. I only used it for the sim card, no banking or monetary app opened on it. I guess in the ios ecosystem, it is connected via find my iphone feature with other ipads/iphones I have at home, thought I don't know how to use it beside turning the feature on and off.
The sim card is on my bank records so I guess I need to alert the banks on that. Anything else I should do? Any way to trace it? Important details: it has both numeric and touchid passcode on it so I don't think anyone else can use it? Am I correct?
Thank you in advance for your advice. Much appreciated.

Go to your phone service provider DTAC/True etc. and have them cancel that SIM card.  They can issue a new one with the same number to use with a new phone.

[kiwikeith]

On 11/9/2024 at 4:13 AM, richard_smith237 said:

 

- Open 'FindMy' (link below) and sign in with your iCloud account - the App will tell you immedately where your phone is. 

https://www.icloud.com/find/

 

Though you said you don't know how to use Apples 'findmy web page' its just that simple. 

 

Thus: if you remember your  iCloud LogIn and Password you can find out where your phone is. 

Then you can 'erase' the device (if you have concerns of data theft etc - its seems you are not too concerned).

 

 

Once you know where your phone is (or even if you don't) you can call it, have a Thai speaker with you if you don't speak Thai, hopefully the person on the other end is decent. 

 

 

yes your right easy to track, found my phone was at the Drs surgery got it back good as gold.

So by tracking it he might get it back, or can delete everything, and the phone is useless, also his phone company can block the phone, at least they did that for me in NZ when I had a phone stolen, it was fingerprint and pin locked, then blocked by phone company , rendered useless to any thief.

But as he might have dropped his phone or left it in a Taxi he might get it back by calling it as you say.