Hello guys/girls,
My girl friend lost her iPhone 5S today while shopping, someone found it and turned it off, it is locked with password and thumb print and has icloud and find my phone activated.
Already made a police report (no insurance).
Any chance/idea how can I recover it? I will compensate anyone who can help me recover the device.
Thanks a lot in advance.
Are you going to find me the device she lost? Or buy me another one? Thanks.
Sounds like there are some juicy pics on there then. Post pics of girlfriend, then I will decide.
Post pics for the boys. Sharing is caring man
Did you enable the "send last location" in IOS8?
http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/09/25/increase-the-chanc…
Your next port of call would be to disable the device by reporting it to Apple. Look at your iphone's packaging, or at your device information in iTunes (it should contain an IMEI and serial number) as you will require this two bits of information to remotely SIM lock the device.
You just have to play the waiting game, if the person who picked up the iphone even has a shred of human decency they'll probably attempt to contact and return the phone. If they happen to be unethical b-tards they'll probably attempt to sell it off and that's probably when you can hope the buyer will attempt to return the phone to you.
This is a related success story you can read if it's any consolation but I think it should be fairly likely that you can get your phone back if a buyer inserts a SIM into the phone and turns it on.
I will give apple a call tomorrow, whoever picked it up turned it off immidiately. Lets see what happens. Thank you for your kind advice and support.
How does one contact the owner if the phone has password enabled?
Assuming you lost the SIM with it and the SIM does not have a SIM PIN, all they have to do is to take the SIM out and put it in another phone, then reply to the SMS/phone calls you make to it.
But yeah I don't have a clue, I've got no iPhone to test, only have an Android device with Cerberus installed.
On my iPhone 4 you do not need to type in the passcode to answer a call.
If the owner report it as missing on find my iPhone, there will be a button to call on the phone to call a specific number that you can set, I think
Yes.
The exact thing happened to my gf. Were smart enough to turn off phone immediately, never been on since. Strange so we could never work out what happened to it.
Broken down for parts maybe.
Maybe just trolling iphone users?
Yeah you've got to watch out for those iphone chop shops.
In most cases, yes.
Or not, because they don't exist.
How would you know it's not been on since…
Find my iphone app
Yea find my iphone. Got it set to alert if it ever turns on
That function is invalid once the sim is removed/replaced, and once the phone is reset. It needs data access to transmit the info to you, without it you will not get any notification.
False, to abbreviate, by putting phone into recovery mode you can restore the phone to factory settings with an offline ipsw, which is the file that iTunes downloads when you're trying to update the phone. Through a fiddly combination of a few tools the activation screen can be bypassed, last thing to do is jailbreak and apps can be installed without need for Apple app store (ie, no email/pass). You're now 100% 'invisible'.
Anyone who tells you it can't be done haven't tried or don't know how.
Possibly posted it overseas where the IMEI block wont affect it.
was going to say that exact thing.
Apple lock the bootloader to a specific Apple ID until "Find My iPhone" is disabled, so far it has not been cracked after quite some time. Most likely only valuable for parts.
Are you sure it was turned off, the new owner could just be holding it wrong.
If their intent is to take it then by removing the sim, and reset the phone will render find my phone function useless.
They cant reset the phone without pin, and even they success in that, they need the apple ID and password associated with the phone to activate it.
You can reset it easily with Pingu + iOS ipsw, activation screen can be bypassed. Not insinuating nor encouraging anyone would/could do so, the option is there for those who wants to.
You can't install Pangu without unlocking the iPhone and trusting the PC it's connected to.
You never know they might be silly enough to turn it back on in a week or two! Just make sure you have the notifications turned on for the find my iPhone app. My friends iPad was stolen and a week later she had the notification come to her phone that it was online and gave her their address! She called the police and they went and retrieved it along with a lot of other stolen property :) hopefully it turns up
I will keep find my iphone app on, thanks for your advice.
unless OP's gf lost something else along with the phone, I doubt the police would waste their time going there to recover them.
You might be surprised…
If they take out the SIM and it is never near a pre-configured wifi access point, then it is not going to ever phone home again.
If it is locked then the best they could do is sell for parts. It wouldn't surprise me that some dodgy buggers would do this deliberately judging by the amount of posts I see locally for people wanting someone to fix their iDevice.
Did you check with centre management? What was the battery level last time you saw it? Did it just go flat?
Time to give her the Palm Treo of Shame!
She charged the phone must before going out, so near full charge, she got a police report to check the security camera for bundoora shopping center, will check it today. Thanks for your advice.
have you try the shopping centre management?
We did find one before in the toilet and hand it in to the management.
You may try to contact the shopping centre.
If someone wanted to return it, shouldnt they keep the phone turned on, instead of switching it off immideatly, got a police report last night so that she can check the security camera.
I would also suggest contacting the shopping centre management and stores she visited.
It may have been turned off but it may have been handed in to a store while still on but kept in a draw or cupboard in a store that has terrible phone reception.
So if you find a phone and it's locked & disabled how do you track down the owner? Would the police return it to the rightful owner if it was handed in?
No, the police would most likely just switch it off immediately and put it in the storeroom. Oh wait…
If the phone was left turned on they could still pick up one of the few hundreds call I made since yesterday.
I found an iPhone 4S once, I tried everything to find its owner. They must have lost it, then they remote wiped it. How am I meant to return it when I can't even unlock it?
I did however take it to the SIM card provider and ran the sim number and IMEI and nothing came up on their system. So IDK what to do with it now it's a paperweight. HAHA
Sometimes its good to include your details on the phone wallpaper. It is also good to include blood group and in case of emergency number on the phone wallpaper.
Put the sim into another phone and check if it has an ICE number. Alternately, look for the obvious suspects, like Mum, Dad, whatever and message them telling them you have the phone.
Yeah I did that, they were all overseas numbers.
I found a phone in the meat section of the supermarket. It was cold. I gave it to the supermarket center bit where they sell cigarettes.
Was it near the…iFillets?
It doesn't cost much to put a new board into the phone though. Especially if you know/are a phone reseller/distributor/repairer.
*edit, for other phones, not sure about apple (supply might be centrally controlled).
Go to iCloud.com and track your device there.. It should tell you where it is..
Go to start of this thread and read, it should tell you that OP has tried this..
Being a truck driver in the city, ive been approached many times by strangers selling me stuff from expensive car chargers to mobile phones for pennies. If an iphone comes up, id know not to buy it. Thanks.
You wouldn't buy anything from a stranger, from starters. BTW I've got some good stuff for you… lets go in that alley over there…
but he loves 2 buy lol
Disable the device. It makes it almost impossible to hackivate it and bypass the iCloud screen, even if they reformatted it. IMEI will also be blocked making it really hard for them to do anything.
I would suggest the app "Prey" next time. This application allows you to tick a box, making it impossible to turn off your phone without the passkey/thumbprint.
Unfortunate scenario in your case, but wish the best for your girlfriend.
Does it also make it impossible to remove sim card ?
battery drain with geo-misinformation then permanent shutoff.
Buy her an android phone.
Yea, no one would bother keeping it!!
You mean you lost your own phone? Typical Ozbargainer has no GF, are singles, in their 20s, no mortagage
keep an eye in ebay and gumtree especially around your area. Most likely who took it will try to resell it as there is no way to use it. If you were able to identify it. contact him/her if it match the IMEI number of your original phone contact the police/ meet him/her …etc
I'm also going to guess that your gf hadn't included their details on the lock screen - one of the new features in iOS8 is you can set owners details which are accessible even if phone is locked. Assuming you had 3G service, on the plus side, even if they take it elsewhere, it should become visible on Find my iPhone (and you can enable a notification for this) once it's turned on.
I suggest phoning different police stations in the area. I lost a phone (not an iphone) once on the Mornington Peninsular as I left in a taxi. The taxi driver took it to his local police station and when I phoned the right police station (I tried a few) they told me they had it - once they checked the IMEI. They were not proactive by calling the provider to track me down, so you will have to do the chasing. They had a box full of phones there - I guess they had more important things to do than track down the owners of lost phones.
Good suggestion but not for this case, "someone found it and turned it off"
Why the assumption that it was turned off. Couldnt it have been dropped and got broken, run over by a car, etc?
Maybe your girlfriend "lost" it because she wants to get a new phone?
Maybe the dog ate it?
Ring the phone carier and block the IMIE, then phone would be useless, they might just ring up the telco to get it unblocked. Just keep calling the telco yourself to see if they have called and if they have, it would leave number they called from. Get the number and inform the police.
Just some ideas.
Thanks.
No
OH wait, that happened to my GF too!!
You sure we not dating the same gal ?
Wow. So much false information in here.
You don't need to report anything. As someone mentioned above, the phone is locked to the Apple ID and is a BRICK without the passcode or thumbprint or Apple ID password.
You can use Find My iPhone to help recover it.
Not if the phone (now fully locked down) does not have the ability to connect to wifi (to send the information to Apple server the exact location) or 3G/4G (the SIM would most likely have been removed as people pointed out). The phone does need to have access to Internet to send data to Apple. Other people are already one step ahead of you when analysing the situation.
Find my iPhone is actually more useful when the phone can still be used by the person who took (or stole) the phone. That way, at least he/she attempts to use it and the location can be sent back to Apple.
Should get an app such as cerebus. Bargain of an app and its quite useful.
$600 and Ill find it for you.