Daughter had her iPhone stolen

[sekker]

Taken from her personal bag during PE class. She made it easy by not having it in a locker.

I just wanted to pass along my experience and advice:

1) make sure location services is active. That's really the best way to follow a walking phone.

2) make sure you have find my iPhone activated.

3) try to locate it as soon as you can. Once you either remote wipe it or disable through your carrier, it's no longer traceable.

4) keep all personal information locked down. 1password, etc.

I can't wait for the new regulations that let you declare a phone stolen so that no one can deactivate it at a carrier. But that will be next year at the earliest.

[samintx]

iPads? and computers have this "locate" thing? how do you activate if so.

[sekker]

iPads have this capability, especially the 3G/LTE models.

There is some software that works for Macs in a similar way.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

samintx wrote:
iPads? and computers have this "locate" thing? how do you activate if so.

iCloud is required. Once you've activated iCloud on the device you can log into iCloud and click on the "Find My iPhone/iPad" option.

[cbelt3]

Sorry to hear about it. Yes, that stinks, and your recommendations are very good.

[vicrock]

There was just a piece on the local Seattle news about a guy whose truck was stolen - with his iPhone inside - he activated Find my iPhone and then called the police who found the truck and made an arrest.

[Microman]

Find my iPhone, and Find my Friends app, completely useless, if phone is taken and turned off, and etc..

AT&T can do nothing, even if phone is used again.
Apple can do nothing, even if someone takes it in for service.

My Daughter had her iPhone stolen as well.

To replace a 4S that you don't get the $699 2 yr contract knocked off is VERY EXPENSIVE.

Sorry about your loss.

I would hope that when the big companies start to deactivate the STOLEN phones, that it can be retroactive. Would love to stop the stolen phone in its tracks.

[sekker]

It's making me think hard about what data I am keeping on any of my electronic devices, especially those that travel like this laptop.

I used to always have this machine with me, but I notice I don't do that so much since I purchased my iPad. Instead, it lives in my hotel room (which is a terrible location, actually).

I'm taking my own advice and getting data together with 1password, locking some data down, and resetting my login password.

If ML were to come with mobile security for the Mac like we have for iOS devices, that feature alone would justify the upgrade price.

[Grateful11]

N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
[quote=samintx]
iPads? and computers have this "locate" thing? how do you activate if so.

iCloud is required. Once you've activated iCloud on the device you can log into iCloud and click on the "Find My iPhone/iPad" option.
I have a 1st Gen iPad 3G, I don't use iCloud, I have "Find My iPhone" and it works.

[decay]

how many of us use the passcode unlock on our iPhones?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4113

Simple passcodes are four digits long. You can disable simple passcode to require a longer passcode with alphanumeric characters.

You can configure your device to automatically erase all contents (Secure Erase) after ten failed passcode attempts.

MobileMe users can remotely enable or change their passcode using Find My iPhone.

If you enter an incorrect passcode too many times, the device will be disabled temporarily.


also: http://amitay.us/blog/files/most_common_...scodes.php

Most Common iPhone Passcodes

To kick things off, out of 204,508 recorded passcodes, the top ten most common were:




Top ten iPhone passcodes: [1234, 0000, 2580, 1111, 5555, 5683, 0852, 2222, 1212, 1998]

Naturally, 1234 is the most common passcode: mimicking the most common internet passwords. To put this into perspective, these 10 codes represent 15% of all passcodes in use. Most of the top passcodes follow typical formulas, such as four identical digits, moving in a line up/down the pad, repetition. 5683 is the passcode with the least obvious pattern, but it turns out that it is the number representation of LOVE (5683), once again mimicking a very common internet password: “iloveyou.”

Interestingly, 1990-2000 are all in the top 50, and 1980-1989 are all in the top 100. I would interpret this occurrence as a subset of users that set their passcodes to the year of their birth or graduation.

Formulaic passwords are never a good idea, yet 15% of all passcode sets were represented by only 10 different passcodes (out of a possible 10,000). The implication? A thief (or just a prankster) could safely try 10 different passcodes on your iPhone without initiating the data wipe. With a 15% success rate, about 1 in 7 iPhones would easily unlock--even more if the intruder knows the users’ years of birth, relationship status, etc.