Airplane mode - bad security.

Did you have a passcode/Touch ID set and Find My iPhone activated? If yes, then there's no way they're getting into your iPhone, nor able to reset it, period.

While the theif could put the iPhone into Airplane mode to avoid tracking, they cannot turn off Find My iPhone (i.e. activation lock) without your Apple ID password -- which means it cannot be erased. Further, without your passcode they cannot gain access to the iPhone's contents, nor change the passcode. At best, the thief can sell your locked iPhone to an unwitting fool who will have purchased a brick.

If you did not have a passcode and Find My iPhone enabled, well I'm sorry to say -- that's on you.

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts - oops, not exactly right, but sort of. You might receive texts or email saying your phone has been found; ignore them; they are just an attempt to get you to somehow release Activation Lock.

And note that you should never, under any circumstances, remove the phone from your iCloud account. Removing it from the account also removes Activation Lock.

As far as airplane mode, there are many ways to prevent a phone from being tracked, and airplane mode is only one of them. Others:

• Turn the phone off
• remove the SIM
• drop the phone in a Faraday bag
• wrap the phone in aluminum foil

Find my iPhone is most useful for lost phones, not stolen phones.

BTW, if you simply go to settings, touchID & passcode, and disable control center under “allow access when locked” then nobody can place your device in airplane mode without unlocking the display. Of course, you have to unlock it too to use anything in control center, but with touchID or faceID unlocking the display is pretty trivial and quick.

You can also disable Siri when locked if you don’t want people to access it.

rockmyplimsoul wrote:

Lawrence Finch wrote:

And note that you should never, under any circumstances, remove the phone from your iCloud account. Removing it from the account also removes Activation Lock.

Thanks Lawrence, I was not aware of that ... I thought that the list of devices associated with your Apple ID was just for other reference purposes (e.g. service info), had no idea that had anything to do with activation lock.

They are two different things. The list of devices you see when you go to Appleid.apple.com is not the list of activation locked devices, it's just devices that you have registered to expedite repair. The list at icloud.com/find is the list that you should not delete a lost device from.

That is correct, your iPhone is useless if activation-locked with Find My iPhone.

You might refer to this article for further instructions:

If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is lost or stolen - Apple Support

They stole your phone, so they know it was stolen. Or the thief fenced it. Did you have Siri enabled on the lock screen? If so, they can hold the HOME button and say "who owns this phone" and your contact record would appear (assuming you set this up, of course). They can also bribe an employee of a carrier to look up the IMEI. Did you use Find my iPhone to put a message with contact information on the screen?

Oh that's right, been so long since I had to do this I forgot about that aspect of iCloud.com.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

And note that you should never, under any circumstances, remove the phone from your iCloud account. Removing it from the account also removes Activation Lock.

Thanks Lawrence, I was not aware of that ... I thought that the list of devices associated with your Apple ID was just for other reference purposes (e.g. service info), had no idea that had anything to do with activation lock.