Will lost mode remain active on a stolen iPhone with deactivated SIM?

ramen176 wrote:

is lost mode still locking the Home Screen on the iPhone and preventing them from using it completely even though I deactivated the sim so there is no internet ?

Only if the phone has had a chance to learn that it is in Lost Mode – i.e., using a connection to a known Wi-Fi hot spot.

If the phone does not know that you have put it in Lost Mode yet, what would keep thieves from ransacking your data would be the passcode lock on the phone. (Assuming that the phone was locked with a passcode that the thieves did not know and could not easily guess.). The phone would allow at most 10 wrong guesses; after that, there would be no way back in except to reset and erase the device.

If the thieves went to reset and erase the device, and the phone was associated with your account, and you had placed it into Lost Mode, the reset attempt would fail.

lobsterghost1 wrote:

On a final note, you may receive a messages purporting to come from Apple saying your phone has been found and asking you to enter your Apple Account credentials. This would be a SCAM as Apple never gets involved in lost or stolen phones. If you get such a message and you give them the information they request, you'll have allowed the thieves to take over your phone.

Not just that – if you give thieves your Apple Account credentials, they could ransack your data in iCloud, even if the phone was passcode-locked and they couldn't get directly at the local data on the phone.

There are other things they could do, too, but I don't want to go into those in detail. The OP should just be aware that keeping their Apple Account secure in the first place (or quickly regaining control if it was compromised) is a very important thing to do.

If you think your Apple Account has been compromised - Apple Support

You think Apple is Stupid for letting someone turn off a stolen phone? What do you think will happen when the battery depletes fully? It will turn off, so what difference does it make. The police don't consider this a crime worthy of much effort. And it would be beyond dangerous if you could see its location and you went to wherever it was and tried to retrieve it. They could kill you, so would that help you in any way? Thieves are smart and they put phones they steal in Faraday Bags, which prevent them from being tracked even if they were powered on. The fact is it is very rare that a stolen iPhone is EVER recovered.

But to answer your original question, you can ask your carrier to deactivate the phone's cellular connection and blacklist the phone. That won't help you ever get it back, but it will prevent it from being used as a cell phone and it will stay locked unless you remove the phone from your account.

On a final note, you may receive a messages purporting to come from Apple saying your phone has been found and asking you to enter your Apple Account credentials. This would be a SCAM as Apple never gets involved in lost or stolen phones. If you get such a message and you give them the information they request, you'll have allowed the thieves to take over your phone.

Apple I think you’re for allowing the iPhone to be shut down even when it’s on lost mode, what is the point of having find my iPhone when the thief can just turn it off to stop us from tracking it ?)

You really were not aware that a thief does not need to turn off the phone to keep you from tracking it?

Any thief can prevent you from tracking the phone in a few seconds without even bothering to try to turn the phone off.

If you haven't figured this out yet and you need for us to explain this to you......post back. You will wonder how you missed such a simple thing.

But.....I think you can figure this out yourself if you think about it.

[Edited by Moderator]