My stolen iphone appears to be offline since the days it was stolen

Question

Level 1

0 points

My stolen iphone appears to be offline since the days it was stolen

My iphone 5 was stolen days ago. So, i posted a question here immediately asking some questions. And the answer replied is clear that, basically the thief can't restore the phone or whatsoever without my apple id and password. And i have a passcode lock on that phone, also without knowing my passcode the thief can't access into my phone and turn off find my iphone. Basically what he stole is a brick phone.

Find My Iphone is untraceable without internet connection.

Here is my question:

What confused me is that, since find my iphone requires internet connection and the thief can't access into my phone without my apple id, password and my passcode even if he manage to restore my iphone AND there is no Data on that phone(as the thief is "clever enough" to remove the SIM) and even if he manage to turn on the wifi but there is no connection(as a password protected wifi needs password, even a free wifi needs you to manually select it only you can have internet connection) right? So, is find my iphone still useful?

iPhone 5, iOS 7

Posted on Nov 18, 2013 12:36 AM

Reply

Answer 1

wjosten

Level 10

95,321 points

Nov 18, 2013 1:33 AM in response to SiongJau Han

First of all, Fond My Phone has never been marketed as a theft prevention/recovery system. Strictly as a way to "help" locate LOST iPhones. Nothing more. Find My Phone can easily be defeated by simply turning a stolen iPhone off. Once off, a thief will remove the sim card, & force the phone into recovery mode & restore it. Once restored, the phone can no longer be tracked using Find My Phone, & any passcode on the phone will be removed.

iPhones running iOS 7.0, while they can still be restored to remove the passcode, they can't be re-activated unless the thief knows the original Apple ID/Password, that was originally used to activate the phone. This is called Activation Lock, & there is, currently, no way around it. Without this info, the phone is useless to anyone that has it.

It's Apple's hope that once word gets out about Activation Lock, stealing iPhones will be less desirable.

Reply

Answer 2

vornis

Level 1

8 points

Mar 26, 2014 4:01 AM in response to SiongJau Han

hello there,

i just posted a similar question.

it turns out that in fact a thief can put a phone offline without having your passcode.

this is i find a flaw in the design.

regards,

robert vornis

Reply