How does Find my iPhone work?

January 7, 2015 7:29 PM

Friday night I dropped my iPhone 6 in the Delta terminal at the Detroit Airport.

That night and the next morning I pinged Fmi frequently. Early Saturday morning - around 7:30 AM - the phone showed its location at a specific address in a suburban neighborhood about 10-15 miles from the airport. However, I put the phone in Lost mode immediately (locks the phone and displays a contact number). I kept checking the location of the phone waiting for it to connect and alert me but it was never turned on. Around 9 AM the battery died and the phone hasn't been charged or turned on since then. If the phone had been stolen, wouldn't the thieves have turned it on?

What does this mean? That the phone was never found? What are my chances of Delta finding it?

posted by bendy to Technology (8 answers total)

Isn't the most likely scenario that someone found it, took it home, and then it ran out of battery and they don't have a charger for it? Without knowing more than that, it's hard to guess at intentions.

Your chances of Delta finding it are effectively zero. It's gone. Sorry.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:14 PM on January 7, 2015

For what it's worth, I lost an iPad mini in March. Someone found it and renamed it before my husband activated the lost function. Then it went off the grid (I'm guessing the battery died). In June, I got a call from someone who had bought it from someone. When she charged the battery, the iPad was locked and it said to call me. I felt badly because she was out some cash but she bought something from someone who didn't own it. She eventually sent it to me.

The good news for you is that if you locked it, you have a chance of getting it back.
posted by kat518 at 8:30 PM on January 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

I left my phone in the Philadelphia airport last month. As I was getting on my flight, I put it in lost mode. When I arrived, a man who worked at the airport had called my parents, and put the phone in the mail. I never got a "found" notification, because he simply called the number I put in the message. So that's the good news.

That said, the bad news is that it's not great that it left the airport -- someone who found it would most likely give it to airport lost and found...make sure to change all your passwords.
posted by femmegrrr at 12:22 AM on January 8, 2015

Best answer: If you've locked it, you may get it back. You can also be reasonably sure that everything on it is safe; as far as I know, there have been no successful hacks of the iPhone lock. My iPhone was stolen, and passed through at least three people who all tried to unlock it, restore it, etc. Eventually, five months later, it was "ransomed" to me, and I went and got it back (for a lot less than they wanted, but that's a different story).

Point is, an honest person will return it, a dishonest person will have zero use for it, so change the message to offer a small reward ($40 is better than nothing for a dishonest person). Even if it has no charge and no connection to the Internet, when a person attempts to restore it through iTunes, it will download the latest message you've locked the iPhone with, if my experience is any indication.
posted by mhz at 5:19 AM on January 8, 2015

Best answer: Not sure if this helps, but v.8 does a "send location before dying" thing:


Make sure that's turned on if you bought a new iPhone.

Another thought...if the "new owners" change out the Sim and use an alternative icloud service to authenticate it, can they use it, or will the EIN still be the same and will towers track it like it was the "old" phone?

Also, could they take it out of its originating country and use it?
posted by catkins at 2:00 PM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: catkins, those were exactly the kinds of things I was wondering...

I got an email from Delta today that they found an object that "closely resembles" mine and they want an address to mail it to. So whatever the results, I'll be getting an iPhone in the mail.

Thanks everyone for the ideas, info and anecdotes.
posted by bendy at 6:35 PM on January 8, 2015

Best answer: Another thought...if the "new owners" change out the Sim and use an alternative icloud service to authenticate it, can they use it, or will the EIN still be the same and will towers track it like it was the "old" phone?

I think a locked iPhone is basically a brick. I don't think there is an alternative iCloud service that would authenticate a new SIM and the EIN doesn't change. If you report your phone as stolen, the EIN goes on a list of bad EINs and thieves would not be able to use it on any cell network in the U.S. or most cell networks in Europe. Maybe if it made its way to China, someone could use it. But in general, a locked iPhone can only be unlocked by someone with the code or by Apple.
posted by kat518 at 9:14 PM on January 8, 2015

kat518: google Doulci.

I'd be willing to bet a Jailbreak (if the iOS on the phone was JB-compatible) would help with "wiping" a phone as well.

But the other questions remain -- wondering if the IMEI, MEID, CDN and ICCID are traceable by the tower, or if there exists a way to modify those and/or spoof them to allow one to use a stolen phone.

Follow the cash -- if there is money to be made by "wiping" stolen phones, you can be sure it exists.
posted by catkins at 11:45 AM on January 14, 2015