Lost iPhone - What to do once you realise it's gone.

Damn! I think I've lost my iPhone.

Seems obvious, but have a decent look for it. If you left it on mute, then send everyone out of the house, turn off anything that makes noise and walk around calling it, listening for the rather distinctive mobile phone vibrating sound. But hey, that didn't work, and it's really lost - outside the house. Oh noes.

Noddy suggestions, but hey. try retracing your steps. Identify the last place that you're positive you had it, and work forward from there. Perhaps left somewhere in a shopping mall? Call the Centre Management and report it, you'll be amazed how often stuff gets handed in there.

OK, OK, enough with the common sense stuff, Cods. It's lost. I'm now sure of it. What next?

Damn! I really have lost my iPhone.

Call the phone regularly. That'll increase the chances of someone picking it up from wherever it's hiding. Then if they answer, you can promise them a case of beer as a reward.

SMS the phone, offering a reward and giving contact details so the nice person can find you. You do have "SMS notifications" set to "On", right?

Call your phone company and request an IMEI lock be put in place on the phone. They actually lock the hardware-specific IMEI. This protects you against a miscreant making a bunch of calls to international ladies of negotiable affection and running up a huge bill for you. It also means that the phone is now made useless as a phone to anyone, on any Australian network. The iPhone will still work as a fancy iPod Touch, but it's dead as a phone - it doesn't help you get the phone back, but it makes it less useful to the thief. However this only applies (to my limited knowledge) to Australian telcos - overseas, you may be up the proverbial creek, and the thief can use your phone on whatever network they like. Not sure if Aussie telcos will report any attempts by the thief to use a phone with a blocked IMEI - anyone know?

If you're with Optus, call 133 713, and say clearly "iPhone support". That should get you put straight through to the iPhone-specific helpdesk staff.

Whilst you're on the phone to your telco, ask them for the IMEI, if you don't already have it. You'll need that for the Police report. In my wife's case, Optus were fine with giving it out, after ID verification.

Call the police station nearest to where you think you lost the phone. Explain your stupidity / bad luck. In QLD, the chaps and chapettes in blue can do a search on their database by IMEI, so ask them to do that. Say please.

Keep calling and/or SMSing the phone regularly, increasing the odds that it'll be found. We're assuming for the moment that having it found by someone, anyone, is a good thing. There's a risk you'll run the battery out, meaning your calls and SMS's won't be seen, however it's still probably a good idea to keep calling.

Front up, in person, at your local cop shop. As I was advised by a pair of very helpful constables, in Queensland you need to report stuff like this in person - there's no facility to do so over the phone or on the net. The police will need your IMEI, phone make, model, description, locations it may have been lost near, and other information of that nature.

Have a look at your insurance situation. If you bought phone-specific insurance as part of your iPhone contract, or if you're covered under your home contents insurance, then they'll need the police report to back up your claim.

Have a think about what your risks are - what was on the phone that can be accessed? Contacts? Emails? SMS history? Call history? Data inside applications? What might be the effects of having that data fall into the hands of someone who doesn't have your best interests at heart? What do you need to do to mitigate the risk of that data being misused? You may want to contact your contacts and inform them, and you might want to have a think about defensive measures against identity theft. Change passwords if necessary.

Damn! What about all the personal data on my iPhone.
Assuming that your phone doesn't have a passcode lock set up, you might be a tad concerned about what might happen if someone does pick up your phone, but they are a bastard. If you're not concerned, you should be.

If you have Mobile Me set up for Push notification for Mail, Calendars, Contacts and/or Safari Bookmarks, then the following should help, logically. However, I've not tried it, so can't guarantee anything.

• On your Mac (or PC, I suppose), do a manual back up all your PIM data (iCal, Address Book, Mail.app, Safari Bookmarks)
• Now do a Time Machine backup of everything.
• Check your backups.
• No, really, make sure you backups are good to go. We're going to nuke everything next.
• Turn off Mobile Me synchronisation.
• Delete ALL data from iCal, Address Book and Safari bookmarks. Yeah, all of it.
• Empty the Trash. Possibly not necessary, but it shouldn't hurt, and may help.
• Turn on Mobile Me synchronisation.
• Synch your Mac with Mobile Me. This should clear all your personal data off the server.
• Wait a couple of hours and hope - if you have Push enabled for mail, contacts, calendars and bookmarks, then hopefully that data on the iPhone will be wiped.

If you have non-Mobile Me email set up on the phone, change all the passwords on your email server, limiting the exposure to just the emails already on the device (can't download any more) and preventing the sending of any email.

After a couple of hours, change your Mobile Me password.

Use your backups to repopulate your Mac with all your data in Mail.app, iCal, Address Book and your Safari Bookmarks.

Yay! This hasn't happened to me yet
You smug bastard. Here's a few things you might consider doing just in case you do lose your iPhone.

Activate the Passcode Lock - on your iPhone, go to Settings > General > Passcode Lock, and follow the bouncing ball. Our iPhones are now set to require the Passcode after 1 hour (the interval is variable from 'immediately' to every '4 hours'), with 'Show SMS Preview' set On (so the SMS you send offering a carton of amber stuff might get read).

Activate the Erase Data function - this is the last option in the Passcode Lock settings page, and it means that after ten failed passcode attempts, all the data on the phone is erased. Which is no worry for you, because you regularly back the iPhone up to iTunes, right?

I'll add to this if anything warrants it, or amend it if I've made any errors. Sorry, I don't know much about what to do with your data if you're using Exchange, although it looks like there's a 'Remote Wipe' function if that's you.

Originally Posted by scokim

Send a text message to the phone and see if the person who took it is willing to negotiate a return. If not, contact your carrier.

Ta. Done that - offered a reward. It's not yet certain that it's been picked up by anyone, but the SMS is there anyway.

Originally Posted by scokim

I think there's a feature which can remotely wipe clean the phone if necessary.

I think, from a quick Google, that that only works with Exchange.

Thanks for the help!

Originally Posted by greggory

I think you can only remote wipe through an exchange server... not sure about MobileMe?

Looks that way to me too. Bugger, eh?

Originally Posted by mitty

I think the remote wipe clean is only through exchange isn't it? though not sure.

Frankly I can't believe that Apple have implemented a phone home thing with the iphone, I certainly wouldn't mind. Eg every time you sync with itunes, it phones home to see if the phone is listed as missing. If it is, the phone is instantly bricked and useless except to the legitimate owner. Wouldn't help you get your phone back, but would make the phone useless to anyone else.

Hope your wife gets her phone back.

Agree! And thanks. She's out looking for it now.

Originally Posted by Exocet

Change your MobileMe password.

Planning to do so, but I think I'll try my idea of backing up PIM data on the MacBook Pro, deleting it all from iCal etc, then synchronising with MobileMe, hopefully wiping the PIM data off the iPhone. Then change the Me password. Already changed the passwords for all our other email addresses (yay for DreamHost's control panel).

Originally Posted by thatfilthyspringbok

Have you called it at all? By the time I called the GF's it was too late

Has she been back to those spots to look for it yet? If not and she can't get back to it, I'm about 15 minutes from Oxley so I could nip out and take a look for you.

Very kind offer, mate, thank you!
As per the edited first post, she has it back, someone handed it in.
Thanks again!

Originally Posted by thatfilthyspringbok

Edit: And now, put the pin code on it and set it to wipe the handsets after 10 failed attempts

...done before she even managed to leave the garage upon return!

dang you're lucky.

next time i'm in brissy i'm keeping an eye out for lost iPhones.

To attempt to balance the karma wheel, given that someone handed the iPhone in, I've amended the original post with my version of what to do in the event of losing your iPhone 3G. Also some tips on what to do before you lose your iPhone...

Post is permalinked at http://forums.mactalk.com.au/47/6545...tml#post728442

Cheers,
Cods