Find Your Stolen Phone

Having your phone stolen is a frustrating and difficult experience. Whether you’re at home or traveling abroad somewhere, it’s important that you try as soon as possible to recover the stolen phone. Current cell phones and smartphones can be recovered through the use of a tracking app, or by a pre-installed tracking program. These apps and programs have varying levels of practicality, and some require your phone to be on and connected to the internet. You can also find a missing phone manually, by calling or texting the number and retracing your steps.

Steps

Reclaiming Your Missing Phone

  1. Call your phone. If you’ve lost a traditional (non-smart) phone that does not have internet connectivity, you won’t be able to track the phone online and will have to use other methods. Begin by calling the phone. If you’re lucky, the person who stole your phone may answer. Alternately, if your phone has simply been misplaced (e.g. on a taxi seat or a subway car), someone may answer who can meet you at a location to exchange the phone.[1]
    • If you call your phone and someone answers, say “Hello, this is [your name], and you’re holding my cell phone. The phone is important to me and I need to get it back; is there a location where we could meet and exchange the phone?”
  2. Text the phone. Even if no one answered when you called your phone, it’s still worth texting it. The thief may eventually change their mind, and decide to return the phone to you, its owner. Send a brief text that provides your contact information and asks for the phone to be returned. If you think it would help, you could also promise a reward to the individual if they return your phone.[1]
    • To do this, you’ll need access to another cell phone. Ask a friend to borrow theirs. If you’re not near a friend, a kind stranger may allow you to borrow their cell phone to text yours.
  3. Take safety measures if you meet to exchange the phone. If someone—whether or not it’s the thief who initially took your phone—agrees to meet with you to give your phone back to you, take safety precautions. Arrange to meet with the individual in a public place—such as a city square or transit station—during daylight hours. If possible, don’t go alone; bring a friend with you for the sake of companionship and safety. Ask your friend to bring their phone, so that they can call the police if anything illicit happens.
    • Even if the individual returning your phone sounds friendly over the phone (or over text), you should still plan to take precautionary measures.

Notifying Authorities and Your Service Provider

  1. Contact the authorities. If you inform the police that your phone has gone missing, they may be able to provide limited assistance locating it. Call 911, or the non-emergency police number, to contact your local police office. Local law enforcement will likely ask you for the serial number for your phone. The Android ID number functions as a serial number; you can find your Android ID by removing the battery from the back of your phone and looking beneath. The Android ID will be a series of numbers preceded by the identifier “IMEI” (International Mobile Equipment Identity).[2]
    • When you reach out to the police, say something like, “Hello, I believe that my cell phone has been stolen. It went missing roughly 10 minutes ago, and I first realized the phone was gone when I was outside of the public library on Main St.”
  2. Alert your service provider. If you’ve called your phone and looked for it without results, you need to call your phone service provider and inform them that your phone has been stolen. The service provider may be able to run a GPS search to locate your missing phone.[1]
    • If a GPS search is not an option—or if the results are fruitless—ask your service provider to suspend service to your phone. This will prevent the thief from making phone calls and potentially racking up an expensive phone bill.
  3. Look for the phone in person. Think back to where you may have been when your phone was stolen, and then retrace your steps in that area. The thief may have quickly changed their minds after taking your phone and, if you’re lucky, may have dropped the phone within a few hundred yards of where they stole it.[3]
    • Walk through places where you spent time before your phone was stolen, and continue calling your phone while looking for it.

Tracking Your Stolen Phone

  1. Enable your smartphone’s tracking app. On iPhones this will be labeled “Find My Phone,” while on Android devices, it’s called the “Android Device Manager.” This program will track your phone’s location and relay this information to the cloud. It’s important that you set this feature up while you still have your phone with you, as there is no way to enable Find My Phone if your phone has already been stolen. [4]
    • Find My Phone is a component of Apple’s cloud-based server, iCloud, which backs up and stores your phone’s data. If you have not yet set up an iCloud account, you won’t be able to use the Find My Phone app. Set up an iCloud account through your phone’s “Settings” menu, then locate “iCloud” and tap the “Account” to sign in.[4]
    • In order for the Device Manager to locate your stolen phone, you’ll need to have the GPS-tracking “Location” setting turned on.
  2. Enable Lost Mode. You can turn Lost Mode on remotely: you’ll need to login to your iCloud or your Android Device Manager account, and can turn on Lost Mode from there. With Lost Mode turned on, whoever stole your phone will be unable to login and shouldn’t have access to any of your phone’s data or apps.[5]
    • Once you’ve recovered your missing phone, you can turn off Lost Mode by entering your passcode on the phone’s home screen.
    • Even if your iPhone or Android is offline (not connected to the internet), you can still remotely lock the phone. You’ll do this through logging in to your online account. Any settings that you change on your device will take effect the next time the phone is online.
  3. Track your phone online. If your iPhone has been stolen, you can track its physical location online at www.icloud.com/find. This will bring up a map showing the current location of your phone. The map will show real-time movements, so if your phone is on a bus or subway car, you’ll be able to follow it along the map.[6]
    • If your Android phone has been stolen—or you prefer to setup your account on a computer rather than on your phone—you can access the Device Manager online at: www.google.com/android/devicemanager. Logging into this website will show you your missing phone’s location.[4]
    • Once you’ve located your missing phone, you can have the device play a sound to draw attention. While this won’t help if someone has deliberately taken your phone, it could be useful if your phone is near you and has simply been misplaced.
  4. Lock your phone. From the iCloud or Android Device Manager website, you can click a button to Lock your phone. This will disable the login mechanism, and make it so that the individual who stole your phone will not have access to any of your personal data or contact information.[7]
    • The Device Manager will ask you to input a new device password for your phone. Once you have recovered your lost or stolen phone, you’ll be able to disable Lock mode by typing in this password.
  5. “Ring” your phone. From the menu on the online phone tracking page, you can choose to “Ring” your phone. This will cause your phone to ring at its maximum volume for 5 minutes, unless you choose to turn off the Ring setting before that. The Ring function is useful if you suspect that someone may have taken your phone by accident or that the loud ringing will help you or another individual find your phone nearby.[7]
  6. Download a tracking app from the Google Play or Apple store. If you prefer not to use the Android Device Manager function to track your phone if it goes missing, you can also download one of many available tracking apps from the Google Play Store. These apps will allow you to connect to a website where, if your phone has been stolen, you can find the phone’s location remotely.
    • An app like Lookout—among many others available on both the Apple Store and the Google Play Store—will allow you to sound an alarm, lock your phone, and remotely wipe your phone’s data.[8]

Tips

  • Tablets like the iPad or Amazon Fire can also be tracked using methods similar to those described above. Download a tracking app onto your tablet, and if you lose it, you can track the tablet just as you’d track a missing phone.
  • Always set up a security code (or lock pattern) for your phone’s home screen, so that a thief cannot have instant access to all of your data.[9]

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-find-a-lost-cell-phone/
  2. ↑ http://developer.samsung.com/technical-doc/view.do?v=T000000103
  3. ↑ http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-find-a-lost-cell-phone/
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/feature/a562816/how-do-i-find-my-phone-when-it-has-been-stolen-or-lost/
  5. ↑ https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201472
  6. ↑ https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201472
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/feature/a562816/how-do-i-find-my-phone-when-it-has-been-stolen-or-lost/
  8. ↑ https://www.lookout.com/feature/missing-device
  9. ↑ http://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-find-a-lost-or-stolen-android-phone-631232/
Retrieved from "https://kipkis.com/index.php?title=Find_Your_Stolen_Phone&oldid=280551"