Stolen Phone….

Grr. Phone nicked from my front jeans pocket on Milan Metro.  Someone ‘bumped into me’. 

I realise it happens a lot but Jeez it’s hard to remember every thing you need to recover your bank accounts, passwords, online access without your actual phone!

 

So, top tips: 

1. Keep your phone in a safe place. Front pocket of jeans is not a safe place!

2. Keep a record of your Apple or Google account details available (not on your phone!) in case you need to disable/kill your stolen phone at very short notice. Maybe try logging in without your own phone (as a test) now.

3. Make sure your phone is backed up every night. It's in Settings. Do it! 

4. Italian Police are, perhaps surprisingly(?), sympathetic and kind.

 

 

For me, when it was turned on, I could track it and indeed I can still see the last time it was online. It’s currently in a park in Milan.

 

For lost iphones, if you can find somebody else’s phone (or some other way of logging onto the Internet) and you could remember your Apple ID and Apple password (!) you can log onto the iCloud Service and mark your device as ‘lost’. That locks it and leaves a message on the screen that you can customise with somebody say else’s phone number so if your phone is found the finder could call the number you have left on the screen to have the phone returned to you.

 

It’s a different situation if your I phone has been stolen of course. What do you do then? Well, there is also the erase command which means whenever the phone is turned on (and it has only any sort of Internet access) a code drops on the phone that wipes it remotely and you get a notification that this is going on.

 

That’s what I did. So no personal information has been lost.