My iPhone got stolen, these are my learned lessons. Make use of them. NOW.
My iPhone 4 was stolen at a concert, right out of my pocket. In other words: I have been pickpocketed. My SIM card shows records of international phone calls to Romania and Spain. Both SIM card and mobile phone should be blocked right now and I have told the police about the theft. Still worried about identity theft though. A phone is just expensive but privacy is priceless. To make things even worse, I can see that my phone is online, but not where it is, my "location services" is off. Sigh.
I am writing this blog post explaining my lessons that I have learned, hoping you could use my tips and prevent thieves from entering private data.
What I like to do, is to take a picture of the concert that I attend and post it on Instagram, showing http://www.instagram.com/yvesvanlaer . It is a thing that I do that was apparently my first mistake. The thieve was especially looking for an iPhone. About the theft itself, it was a regular pickpocket, when you get a little push, you never think of getting your phone stolen. He/she perfectly knew what to do when he had my phone, I shall explain why and how.
I didn't have a lock screen unlock code.
I thought it was annoying, entering the same code over and over again, maybe about 200 times a day, just to get access to your device. I was wrong not having a passcode lock, this gave the thieve also an easy access to my phone and that allowed him to make (international) phone calls on my behalf.
To secure your phone with a passcode lock, go to: “Settings --> General --> Passcode lock”.
Lucky for me I am on a carrier with a pre paid card, so the thief was only able to call until my pre paid card balance hit zero. I was even more lucky he/she did not know how to reload my card before I blocked it, things could have been a lot worse if he had access to unlimited credit.
iCloud and Find My iPhone.
Alright, did you know you can backup your iPhone with iCloud and track your phone with Find my iPhone? You can configure iCloud very easy. It takes only a few steps: http://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/. Once everything is set up on your devices, you can make backups “in the cloud” so every device is synchronized, you will not lose your contact numbers this way. And even better, when “Find my iPhone” is configured you can locate it whenever your phone is connected through an Internet connection, either WIFI or your provider. You can check where your i-devices are on http://www.icloud.com. This is, unless they turn off “location services” and WIFI. Which was the first thing the thief did.
Something that I did not know is that you can restrict the access of turning location services off.
It is very easy to do as well: “Settings --> General --> Restrictions”. You will have to enter a different password for more protection. Then you have to go to “Allow Changes --> Location” and final press: “Don't Allow Changes”.
This prevents the thief from turning location services off. The only thing that he could do is turn on flight mode but that way he cannot make phone calls anymore. Unfortunately, you cannot restrict flight mode.
iCloud has some other advantages. You can put your phone in “Lost mode”. That means it will start tracking every step it does and put on an extra lock code on the IOS so the thief cannot log in to the system anymore... But this only gets activated if the device is connected to the Internet, I guess. One final thing you can do with iCloud is remotely remove all you synched data, once again, when connected to the Internet. But doing this, you also remove the possibility to track your phone.
When I filed a complaint to the police. They asked me if I knew the MAC address of the iPhone. Apparently they can track your phone that way, when it is connected to a WIFI somewhere in the whole world. There are two ways to obtain that MAC address. Either go to “Settings --> General --> About” and write down the number next to “Wi-Fi Address”. If you don't have your iPhone anymore you can obtain that number by looking at your WIFI router statistics. If your phone was connected once, you can look it up easily. That was what I needed to do.
The IMEI you can find on the box where your iPhone came with or in the “Settings --> General --> About”... Apple needs that number to totally block your phone. Beware, it will take them one day, and a lot can happen in one day.
An iPhone is just a phone, but privacy is priceless
An iPhone is just an (expensive) phone but it has a lot of data on it that you don't want to share with others. With one touch they can enter your Facebook, Twitter or other applications. In case of a theft, it is best to change every password that I could think of. But then I realized there is the offline stored data like for example text messages and e-mails, be very aware of passwords they can access through the offline data. That is my main concern, that they are going to steal my identity by going through my offline saved mails and for example print out my purchased concert tickets and sell them to other people and that way do me some more damage. Be careful and like I said before, you can prevent this by setting a passcode lock.
So, a wise lesson learned. My phone got stolen by the blink of an eye.
Taking pictures with an expensive phone on a concert.
Not having a passcode lock on my home screen, do this now.
Not blocking my mobile vikings account right away.
Not using restrictions to prevent people from turning off location service, do this now.
Having offline accessible private data.
iCloud: http://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/
Find my iPhone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVcoZmqGuOg
How to Prevent Thieves Disabling "FIND MY iPHONE" on iPhone 5, 4, 4s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TrTwXE7n3I
Please people, don't be as foolish as me and use my tips.
