Stolen iPhone 4S...any way to track it? other than using the Find My Iphone app

Hi it may pay to report it to the Police for insurance claim purposes , I cooked my Iphone 4 in the sun by the pool, I went to an Apple shop in the UK, they were very good , my phone was stuffed but they supplied me with a 4s at a great price, and transferred most of my data and photos from ICloud , also emails and contact list, great free service .

Good luck

no.

If you did not install and activate find my iphone, you can not track it.

The only way to locate/disable/erase any lost/stolen iPhone is through Find My Phone or a similar app. However, this requires that Find My Phone be setup/activated, on your phone, before it was lost/stolen. You would then login at iCloud.com & try to locate it. This requires the phone be turned on & have an Internet connection. There is no other way to locate a lost/stolen iPhone. Apple can't/won't help you, nor will your carrier. Report the loss to the Police, your carrier & Insurance company. Change all of your passwords.

If your carrier offers Blacklisting & they Blacklist the phone, it will be unusable as a phone.

I think you should always report this kind of thing to the authorities, because if you don't then you increase the chances of it happening again.

Sadly, though I don't think there's any other way you can recover your iPhone or its content unless you had enabled Find my iPhone but since you said you weren't using iCloud services it sounds like that's not the case. The pictures that you had on your computer however, will be restored to your new device if you use your backup file when you're setting it up on iTunes.

Sorry but unless Verizon offers a tracking service, then if it doesn't show up in Find My iPhone there is no way to track it. Notify the police - absent any leads there's not much they can do but you never know - and change any passwords for any online accounts you may have used from your iPhone (the iTunes Store, for instance).

As to your photos, if you have the photos backed up on your computer or some online service such as Flickr, then you can restore them to your new iPhone. If you didn't transfer the photos from your iPhone before it was stolen, then those photos are lost.

Regards.

Report to police, change passwords on all accounts that were one the phone. If you cancelled service with the carrier, that can prevent tracking with Find My iPhone. You can read further here https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3362

Contact the police. I know of no way other than Find My iPhone to track or locate a lost or stolen phone.

Did you have Find My IPhone turned on on the stolen phone? If you did keep checking for it.

The thief could also have erased and reset your phone by now. Did you have it password protected at the startup level?

I would also suggest changing all passwords that might have been associated with that phone.

Just so you don't hold on to that sinking feeling for not taking out every possible precaution aside from just leaving your phone at home and not using it... after having your phone stolen or .. lost:

I paid the insurance to cover loss or damage for two year... (really dumb of me since the deductible is $200. USD: more than I can buy the exact phone online and more than I could have sold mine if I had sold it online; (iphone 4 -32g). So don't kick yourself for not having insurance if you didn't.

I had all apps turned on: PhotoStream (which would have had to be active on your phone in order to retrieve photos to your pc or your mac now that it is lost). However, it is only as good as the last internet connection you were on and only if your were on that connection long enough for the photos to upload to photo stream. I was able to cover photos from Beijing and not the remaining 3/4 of my trip's photos.

Any photo app you may have been using most likely has an online access. Did you download a photo app? Start there. Do you have an itunes account? You can see what apps you have downloaded from there. If you use a mac you can see the photos in photo stream, (a sunflower icon).

Even if you had registered and jumped through all the hoops keeping app and updates up to par and a security passcode in place on the phone itself, your i phone tracking is not going to work at all unless the user is able to connect to the internet. This is not going to happen unless they can access the internet by having your passcode. So this tracking system, insurance and protection code is in most all cases a false since of security. It doesn't help you 95% of the time... i am guessing.

The except is possible I know. I found two iphones one time and saw the owners request to call them that was sent from the tracking system. I called and returned their phones. The people who have my phone have most likely dismantled it and are using the parts to recreate replications.... i lost it in China, lol. where I saw massive fake reproduction within buildings that consume 7-15 floors and about 8 city blocks. So, it isn't always about your information: in this case they wanted the hardware. Which brings up the next point.

In the iphone tracking portion of icloud.com there is an option to erase the phone. I am not sure if this makes it unusable for the new owner of default or if it just clears your crap so they can actually use the phone. I've left my stuff on the phone thinking it is most likely already in pieces. (a kinda Frankenstein-ish feeling when I think about it). If you erase you phone via the icloud it seems you are no longer able to track it. it cuts all of your ties and abilities to do anything... if you could do something. ... hmmm.

So, do not bother with phone carrier insurance on phones: better to make sure it is covered in a home renter's or owner's policy. You have to specifically ask this of your agent or it is not a part of your coverage. This will cost you less than the usual cell phone insurance, shouldn't be more than $5. per month. (i paid $10!! .... should be a class action going on somewhere around that in itself). Phone carrier insurance is a scam from A to Z these days... don't fall for it like I did. Yes, it was once a useful tool. Just make sure your home owner/renters ins deductible is not the same value as the phone.

So, do not fret that you did not have this "service" activated. Do however, check to see if you can download Photo Stream to any computer and access your last uploaded pictures from the phone. This application was most likely on your phone. Although you would have had to tie it to an account on the phone in order to tap into photo in a cloud of sorts.

Hope this helps if nothing more but to ease the pain.

: )

ferfer

I am always fascinated by these threads: so much good advice, so little trace of the original poster....

Ferfersky: the thread died nearly two months ago. Keep an eye on the dates of posts ;-)

Thanks for your post -- as someone who's phone was just stolen in Paris, I appreciate that I was able to find the information out here.

As tonefox correctly points out, this thread was from a few months ago, but it was timely for me. I have been trying to decide just how long to keep my information out there before employing the "erase data" option from Find My Phone. Of course, it is discouraging to see that even employing that option, doesn't mean that anything gets done as nothing happens until my stolen phone gets connected to an internet source.

I guess the lesson that I have learned is that it is helpful that I had set up a passcode on my phone for this trip. It seems like there is at least a level of some security (at least I'm hoping so from what I have read) that stops the thieves from getting access to my information. If by some chance it does get turned on, then I guess I will have hopes of locating it. Probably very unrealistic to continue to hope, but I can be optimistic for a few more days at least. And if, as you pointed out, the phone has already been dismantled for the hardware parts, then it doesn't matter if I erase the data or not - correct?

You know there are actually things you can do to find your phone, lots of pay online sites have a money back guarantee they can locate the GPS pinging the towers on the phone. There are a ton of individual identification numbers for each iPhone. They phone number is only one. You have your serial, uuid, meid, serial number, etc. and once you report that stolen, and ein is placed on the logic board and smart parts in the phone (it's like an encryption system and a hardware lock), basically making the most and exclusively valuable part worthless. To know how to part and sell an iPhone (especially a CDMA) online ~ flagged as stolen (each part is identified and in apples global service exchange, eBay will press charges. Most buyers purchasing parts are repair shops or legit- and will report a flagged assembly), is a redic idea for the average person finding your phone in a PE class won't know how to do this.

The systems you want to find this phone are called spy tracking software, they usually are used to see if a spouse is cheating. And actually, even if you haven't clouded a device registered under your apple ID, should you load it on another apple device and log in- the system may still be able to locate, should the phone have not been wiped. Try it, apple auto links via your hardware identification info and wifi addy your devices together via your apple ID, not the app installation. There are also a lot of ways to SMS message the phone and locate it. The police can triangulate the cell signal as it pings towers. It's done via GPS- not cell. Without a sim, you have a much better chance if recovering it. Also think about calling an ACMT cert IT business (apple cert Mac tech repair shop) and asking for a quote and a plan for retrieval. They will do this for free. I've recovered many devices without the app, if people had a deeper understanding of the systems, it is not about installation- but using access points to find the GPS. You can't utilize the features fully, but you have options. Many actually. Also be aware, legally, you have leverage, the replacement cost is a felony in most states, so getting a trace on GPS is very feasible.

I'm a professional IT Apple Consultant and work a lot with crisis situations - as well as can develop and write advanced iOS (which is a lot of languages). But apple has a million backdoors. You'll find the phone, good luck!!! :) I just located one in Canada stolen 11 months ago, no app, never clouded. It popped up easily in the list of devices of the owner. And I also move my overflow on amazon and eBay- selling 14 iPhone 4/4s parted with clean titles, took me 2 months and was brutal. Not a chance it's gonna be a cake walk for a hs kid who can't legally sell. Hope that helps- always google. The Mac forums tend to have pro advice, much more so then apple discussion boards. FYI... They are IT specialist not Mac users- we have a different understanding of the tech. Which we all LOVE, obviously, we made apple our careers.

Could you actually tell us these particular websites or sources that you're talking about and not just giving us these options to use them? I'm sorry if this sounds rude, and I'm sorry if this isn't the brightest question in the world. I'm only having a bit of trouble finding these websites is all.

Despite the previous poster's claims to certain professional creditials, she is incorrect in most of what she's saying about finding lost phones. I think that explains the lack of useful specifics. If you did not activate some sort of tracking service before the phone was lost, you are, for all practical purposes, out of luck.

Apple will not assist you in finding your lost phone, regardless of how many different ID numbers it has. Law enforcement could supoena all sorts of records from your carrier that might enable them to find your phone if it was still turned on and connected. However, it is unlikely that they would do so as the cost would far outweigh the value of the phone.

Best of luck.

I'm having the same problem. I was on vacation for July 4th and left my phone in a bathroom on Tuesday and it was gone when I went back there. I didn't have Find My iPhone activated. I called the phone periodically throughout the day and sent a text message to it offering a reward to whoever has it. I have a lock code on the phone so they can't get into it but tried calling it since they could answer without unlocking it, but they haven't. Now the phone is dead, goes straight to voicemail.

I contacted both Verizon and Apple, who like the other posts have said are unwilling to help me. I am hesitant to suspend service to the phone since then I can't contact the person who found it if they are able to turn it on. It wasn't stolen so I don't think the person has malicious intentions. Being a holiday weekend I won't give up hope for a few more days. I've tried different tracking apps but they say that I have to activate or give permission from my phone in order to use them which I can't do.

The phone itself is unimportant to me. However, every picture I have ever taken of my nine month old daughter since she was born are on there and I am desperate to get them back. I have no copies and no way that I know of to retrieve them. I never connected the phone to my computer so I have no backup. I bought an iPad mini earlier this year and had photo stream set up with the cloud so I have all the photos taken from the point I got the iPad but nothing from before that. I didn't know about the Mountain Lion software upgrade for my Macbook Pro where iPhoto can do photo stream so I don't have that either.

I am not that tech savy, but am willing to hire someone who can successfully track it for me. Any help is greatfully appreciated. Thanks!

You are the only one who can track your iPhone or retrieve your pictures. You took responsibility when you opted into (or out of) iCloud, including Find my iPhone and/or turn on Photo Stream. It's not a question of unwillingness on the part of Apple or Verizon. It's your choice to enable the features, and your job to use them.