Find My iPhone

‘IfFound 3’ makes it easier for good Samaritans to return your lost iOS device

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 3, 2016

Nothing gives you a lower-sinking gut feeling than when you accidentally leave your $650+ iPhone sitting somewhere and forget about it, or when it ends up stolen.

Fortunately, good Samaritans now have an easier way to get in touch with you if your device is ever found thanks to a recent Cydia release called IfFound 3.

Indeed this jailbreak tweak is a new iteration of a tweak that has existed for ages, but it's back and it's ready for iOS 9, and in this review, we'll show you exactly how it works.

How to enable Activation Lock on Apple Watch

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated June 12, 2018

When Apple first shipped the Apple Watch earlier this year, its software wasn't capable of Activation Lock—the technology that Apple uses to prevent someone from activating a lost or stolen iOS device without first validating ownership.

Activation Lock is a feature that first appeared with the introducion of iOS 7. It works by preventing an iOS device from being activated after being reset without first disabling Find My iPhone. By enabling Find My iPhone, a user is effectively enabling Activation Lock, therefore providing a layer of protection against would be thieves.

When we first reported that Activation Lock didn't ship with watchOS 1, many users were perplexed. Why wouldn't Apple include such a feature in its popular wearable? After all, Activation Lock has been credited with reducing iPhone thefts by as much as 50% in some regions.

While we never were told exactly why Activation Lock didn't ship with watchOS 1, chances are that it just wasn't ready at the time. With watchOS 2, however, things have changed. As Apple promised back at WWDC 2015, Activation Lock is included with its latest watchOS update...and it works.

New in iOS 9: Lost Mode switches on Low Power Mode automatically

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated June 12, 2018

The new Low Power Mode option in iOS 9 allows users to eek out more battery life by disposing battery draining features such as parallax effects, throttling down CPU performance, and disabling background app refresh. In all, Low Power Mode can provide users with up to 3 additional hours of battery life.

In iOS 9, Apple is allowing Find My iPhone's Lost Mode, a mode that lets you to mark your iPhone as being lost, to use Low Power Mode at the same time. By doing so, lost iPhones have an even greater chance of recovery due to being able to stay on for a longer period of time.

Teen gets shot dead after tracking down his lost phone

Sébastien Page ∙ June 19, 2015

We often read success stories about how people use Find My iPhone or other tracking tools to locate their lost or stolen smartphone and end up recovering it. But we easily forget there is a sad flip side to these kind of stories, and the death of Canadian teenager Jeremy Cook is the tragic reminder of that.

iCloud.com’s Find My iPhone replaces Google with Apple Maps for all users

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 9, 2014

Nearly two years after supplanting the stock Google Maps iOS app with its own much-maligned service that resulted in Scott Forstall's ousting, Apple's web-based Find My iPhone service available over at iCloud.com seems to have adopted Apple Maps backend for all users, reports 9to5Mac.

Previously, using the web-based version of Find My iPhone used to rely on Google Maps data. The move could indicate plans to roll out a web-based Apple Maps accessible to anyone through a web browser, allowing the iPhone maker to better compete with Google Maps.

Apple releases tool to check the Activation Lock status of iOS devices

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 8, 2016

Apple recently released a tool that lets anyone check the Activation Lock status of iOS devices. Introduced along iOS 7, Activation Lock is a security feature that prevents anyone from erasing or activating your iOS device without entering your Apple ID and password first. The feature must be disabled before a device is passed or sold to another person. Failure to do so renders the device unusable for the new owner.

With the release of this new tool, Apple wants to make the process of checking for Activation Lock easier, and prevent people from buying a device that might have been locked because it was lost, stolen, or simply because the previous owner forgot remove the device from his account.

Apple reportedly patches Find My iPhone vulnerability to hack Apple ID accounts

Christian Zibreg ∙ September 1, 2014

According to The Next Web this morning, Apple has allegedly patched a security hole in the Find My iPhone service which allowed nefarious users to brute-force Apple ID passwords, according to Twitter user @hackappcom who posted a proof of concept titled 'iBrute' to GitHub on Saturday.

This should be good news for celebrities who reported their iCloud accounts being hacked and saw their nude pictures posted online.

As Cody told you yesterday, Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence and several other celebrities found themselves in the middle of a major nude photo leak after attackers apparently exploited a vulnerability in Apple’s Find My iPhone service.

New service offers permanent Activation Lock bypass

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Chronic Unlocks has recently started offering a new service which claims to bypass Activation Lock on iOS devices that have been locked. Although the method used to get around the security measure has yet to be detailed, the service can be helpful for people who bought an iOS device that is still tied to its previous owner's Apple ID. But don't expect the company to help you bypass Activation Lock on a stolen device!

What to do if your iPhone is lost or stolen

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Better safe than sorry, they say. This is particularly true when it comes to expensive items that contain a considerable amount of private information, such as your iPhone or your iPad. If you can't necessarily prevent losing your iPhone or even worse, having it stolen from you, there are however some steps you can take to ensure that in the eventuality such thing would happen, you will be completely ready to handle the situation.

While we hope you'll never have to deal with this, we want to make sure you know your options and have been proactive in securing your iOS device, whether it is an iPhone, an iPad, or an iPod touch. In this post, we will share with you some of the actions you can take to prepare your iPhone or iPad, and to protect it in case it is lost or stolen.

How to remotely erase an iPhone or iPad that was lost or stolen

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Continuing on our series of post about Find My iPhone and Activation Lock, we're going to look at yet another feature that will ensure the data contained on your iPhone or iPad is safe in case someone gets ahold of it.

We previously saw how to protect, track, and activate Lost Mode for any iOS device with Find My iPhone. In this tutorial, we're going to learn how to remotely erase an iPhone or iPad that might have been lost or stolen to make sure your data remains safe, no matter what happens.

How to use Lost Mode if your iPhone or iPad is lost or stolen

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated August 15, 2019

Using Find My iPhone is the first step to protecting your iPhone or iPad in case it is lost or stolen. The feature lets you effectively track your device and even lock it, making it virtually useless to anyone who would find or steal it.

The most powerful feature of Find My iPhone is Activation Lock, a way for you to remotely lock your device by putting it in Lost Mode. Doing so, you will be able to remotely password protect the device, and add a custom message on its Lock screen so that if someone finds your phone, they can call you and arrange a meet up.

Also worth highlighting is that when put in Lost Mode, no one will be able to restore or reactivate your device without your Apple ID and password. If this might not prevent someone from stealing your device, it will at least prevent this person from doing anything with it.

In this post, we will show you how to enable Lost Mode of an iPhone or iPad that might have been lost or stolen.

How to track a lost or stolen iPhone or iPad with Find My iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated December 26, 2018

In a previous post, we had a look at the first step in securing your iPhone or iPad by enabling Find My iPhone, a feature that lets you track, lock, and even remotely wipe the device in case it has been lost or stolen. Now that we have the feature turned on, we're going to show you how to track an iPhone/iPad that has been lost/stolen using Find My iPhone.

Tracking an iOS device with Find My iPhone requires that you either have the Find My iPhone app installed on another device (it could be your iPad or someone else's iPhone) or that you use Find My iPhone directly from iCloud.com. Both methods work equally well, and the steps to track a device are pretty much identical regardless of what you use.

In this post, we will be using the Find my iPhone app to track a lost or stolen device.