What to Do If Your Phone Is Stolen

At a Glance

For most Americans in the third decade of the 21st century, their smartphone is the most important item they own.

Even if you don’t use it to make actual phone calls, it’s an always-on, always-connected terminal that links you to the wider world, makes your life easier, and provides portable entertainment in the form of movies, music, games, and augmented reality.

I don’t think I would be able to function as a human being without mine. My life would grind to a halt.

My banking is done through apps; if I want to take a trip across town, I use the Uber app; for longer distances, I book flights using my smartphone. If I’m paying for physical goods in an actual shop, there’s a good chance I’ll use the Apple Pay contactless payment app on my iPhone if I’m not carrying enough cash.

In short, my phone is linked to every aspect of my life – both online and offline. To lose it would be a disaster for me, but to have it stolen would be even worse.

Here’s what you should do if your phone goes missing.

1. Check That You Haven’t Just Misplaced It

Oh no! Somebody’s stolen my phone – oh no they didn’t, I left it in my other pants. Or it’s fallen down between the couch cushions, or I left it by the kettle when I went through to make a cup of tea. Maybe it’s in the bathroom…

If you’re in your own home, your car, or the home of a friend, the chances are good that you’ve set it down somewhere while you were distracted, and forgotten exactly where.

Have a look around you, and plunge your hands into the dark recesses of the couch cushions. Not there? Retrace your steps. Did you leave it in the bathroom after a particularly long reading session?

If you have access to another phone, the first thing you should do is call yourself up and listen for the familiar ringtone. If you can hear it, follow the sound to its source.

If your phone is set to silent, you’ll need to take extra steps to find out where it is. Fortunately, most smartphones have built-in finder tools. These include Google’s Find My Device and Apple’s Find My iPhone. Other phone-finding apps may be provided by your manufacturer or service provider.

Both Apple’s and Google’s “Find” services will show your phone’s last known location on a handy map. Google’s map even shows the Wireless network it’s currently connected to. Both services allow you to play a (very loud) sound on your device, making it easier to locate. Other options include locking and erasing the device.

If it’s an iPhone and you own an Apple Watch you can ping the phone with your watch. Just swipe up on the Apple Watch’s screen and then tap the icon that looks like a phone with sound waves coming out of it (second icon down on the right on watchOS 9). Your iPhone will make an obnoxious noise (even if it’s in silent mode), helping you to track it down.

2. Lock and Erase Your Device

If you’re absolutely sure that your handset has been pilfered, the main thing you need to do is to secure its contents. The handset itself may be valuable on the second-hand market, but that is nothing compared to the value of what’s stored on the phone and what it’s linked to.

Criminal misuse of Paypal, Amazon, and banking apps can see you landed with huge bills, and someone searching through your Gmail box can build up a detailed profile of your life, your friends, your financial history, and all kinds of information that would be useful to target you in the future.

You need to deny thieves access to that information.

Locking and Erasing Your Android Phone

Visit Find My Device and log in with your usual Google credentials. Your phone may show up on the map far away from you. You should not attempt to retrieve it yourself – confrontations with criminals rarely end well.

To the left of the map, there are three options: “PLAY SOUND,” “SECURE DEVICE,” and “ERASE DEVICE.”

Obviously, if you suspect your phone has actually been stolen, you will not want it to ring loudly as this will alert the thieves to the fact that you know it’s missing.

If it’s showing up in a supermarket or gas station, you may want to secure the device – this is a temporary measure to prevent unauthorized access. You should then ring the store and find out if it has been handed in to staff.

The third option is the nuclear one. “Erase device” will do exactly what its name suggests. All of your online accounts, apps, and data will be scrubbed – resetting the device back to its factory settings.

This saves thieves the bother of resetting the device before selling it, but more importantly, it denies them access to your personal information.

Locking and Erasing Your iPhone

Apple’s offering is similar and requires you to visit iCloud on a different device. You will need to log in with your Apple credentials.

Selecting the phone icon will take you to the “Find devices” screen, which will show all of your Apple devices, including your iPhone’s location on a map. You can narrow down the devices you’ll see by selecting your lost iPhone from the pulldown menu near the top of the screen.

As with Android, you will have the option to “Play Sound,” “Lost Mode,” or “Erase iPhone” on your iPhone.

Selecting “Erase iPhone” will bring up a warning, and you will need to confirm your choice by hitting the big red “Erase All Data” button.

A Couple of Minor Caveats

As I said, erasing all data on either your Android or Apple device will remove your accounts – this means that you will no longer be able to locate them using the phone’s location tracking website.

If your phone is powered down or does not have internet access when you send the remote wipe command, it won’t work until the phone is powered on and is able to receive a signal.

Both iPhone and Android devices need you to activate the phone-finding service on your device before you can use them. If it’s already been stolen – it’s too late.

3. Call the Cops!

Your phone may be vitally important to you, but it’s not likely to be a priority for the police.

Phone theft is pretty common, and when it comes down to it, their priorities are more likely to be geared towards murders, robberies, and other violent crimes.

However, your chances of having police investigate the theft increase dramatically the more information you can give them – for instance, the phone’s location from your finder app.

But it’s still important to let the police know for a number of reasons.

Perhaps the most immediately important is that by reporting your smartphone as stolen, you will receive a crime number. You can use this crime number to claim against your phone insurance for a new phone.

If you’ve lost money through criminals using apps on your phone, having a police report and a crime number will go some way towards helping you to reclaim it.

If the thief is later arrested for a different crime and your stolen phone is found among their belongings, the police will have a record of it which will allow them to trace and return it to you.

When reporting the theft to authorities, it helps to have the phone’s IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number on hand. This number is unique to each handset. In addition to helping identify your iPhone or Android device if it eventually turns up, networks in most countries will block phones with an IMEI that has been registered stolen.

Your IMEI will be printed in the documentation which came with your handset.

4. Call the Network!

Your phone’s SIM card is another way for thieves to leave you with huge and unexpected bills.

All calls you make, as well as texts you send, are billed to you by your network. Most plans have a set number of minutes you can spend talking and texts you can spend.

Calls and texts within these limits are included in your plan, but over these limits, unauthorized charges can rack up. That’s not taking into account calls to premium rate numbers, which are not included in your plan and can cost dollars for every minute.

You should contact your network as quickly as possible to let them know that your SIM card has been stolen. Once it has been canceled, thieves won’t be able to make calls at your expense.

5. Call the Bank!

Many banking apps allow you to view your card details and authorize transactions from within an app.

If you haven’t managed to wipe your phone remotely because you don’t have an active phone-finder app, criminals may have access to your accounts and may be using your money to pay for their expensive purchases.

Call your bank to cancel any cards that are linked to your phone.

I strongly suggest that you set your banking, credit card, financial apps, and shopping apps to require a password or face/fingerprint authentication each time you open them.

6. Call the Insurance Company!

Mobile phone handsets can be expensive, and it’s likely that you took out insurance to protect your initial purchase – if not, it often comes bundled with subscription plans.

Check documents for your policy number, and phone them to put in a claim. Make sure that you have your IMEI number and your police report or claim number to hand so that everything goes smoothly.

If you’re covered through Applecare+, they won’t pay out if the Find My iPhone app wasn’t active at the time it was stolen.

7. Change Your Passwords!

When was the last time you typed in a password when using your mobile device? You probably can’t even remember.

In most cases, your phone will remember these for you, filling out forms and entering security details on your behalf. They are stored in encrypted form on your handset, but it’s not completely inconceivable that these can be revealed to a sufficiently determined adversary.

You should change your passwords as soon as possible.

Protecting Your New Phone

You’ve probably spent the last hour in a panic – trying to remember what policies you have, whether or not you have an active finder app, and digging through stacks of ancient paperwork for phone numbers, IMEI numbers, and other numbers.

When the worst happens, it helps to have everything set up and ready to go.

1. Set Up Find My Device

Make sure to set up “Find My Device” on your phone ahead of time.

on Android

Setting up “Find My Device” on Android is simple – you don’t even need to install an app to do it.

• Open the Settings app.
• Open the “Security” tab.
• Toggle “Find My Device” to On.

That’s it.

on iPhone

To turn on “Find My iPhone,” follow the steps below.

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Tap on iCloud.
3. Scroll down to the bottom and toggle “Find My iPhone” to On.

2. Keep All of Your Phone’s Important Information Together

When your new phone arrives, it will come with a wealth of documentation.

This will include your IMEI number, emergency contact details for your network, and insurance information.

You should keep all of this information together and put it somewhere memorable where you can find it in a hurry.

Consider copying the most important details onto a separate piece of paper and keeping it in your wallet.

If you can’t find the IMEI number in your paperwork, it’s simple to find it on the device itself – open the dialler app and type #06#. Your IMEI will be displayed on the screen.

3. Use Better Passwords

Using a password or PIN to unlock your handset is a pain. You need to type it in every time you unlock the device, which is time-consuming, and you may not see the need – especially if you are usually the only person with physical access to the device.

But in cases where the device has been stolen, having a strong password or PIN makes it that much more difficult for criminals to steal money from your accounts, make premium-rate phone calls, and generally wreak havoc in your life.

Make sure you pick a good password and one which is not easily guessable. Neither 1234 nor pa$$word are good picks. Check out my article about the dangers of reusing passwords for more information about how to create a strong password.

It goes without saying that any apps which allow you to spend money should be password-protected. This includes apps such as Amazon and your banking app.

If you’re worried about your phone being stolen, I do NOT recommend two-factor authentication, as the authentication token is usually sent via text or email to the (now stolen) phone.

It’s good practice to use different unique passwords for every app and service and to avoid saving these passwords in plain text or in browsers. Instead, you should use a password manager such as 1Password. That way, you only need to remember the password for your password manager. Plus, most password managers will generate secure passwords, saving them for future reference.

Make sure that your password manager requires a password each time it is used and make it particularly hard to guess. As the password manager contains all the login details for your other accounts, it’s a valuable target for thieves.

4. Set Your Accounts to Sync

It’s unlikely that you use your phone as a simple silo for your contacts, calendars, photos, and videos – part of the joy of being part of the Apple or Google ecosystem is that you are tied into a huge array of cloud-based products. iCloud in Apple’s case, and a huge and ever-changing stable of products from Google.

Provided that, during setup, you accepted your phone’s suggestions to synchronize each app, your photos and everything else are safe in the cloud.

Restoring your vital information, appointments and memories to your new device during setup is easy, and your new device will guide you through it during the setup process.

5. Act as If Your Data Is a Target

If someone picked your phone out of your pocket right now, how much damage could they do with it?

You should always act as if you and your phone are targets. Log out of apps as soon as you finish using them – especially banking apps and ones which allow one-click purchases. Never keep “intimate” personal snaps of either yourself or others on the device.

What Happens to Your Stolen Phone?

Because of features that allow owners to find their phone easily, the original thief will want to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

In most cases, the SIM will be removed straight away and the phone reset to its default state. Criminals will then list the phone for sale on Craigslist or another site that does not require identity verification.

Conclusion

Good preparation means that you can react quickly if someone steals your phone. Make sure that you have Phone Finder enabled on your phone and all of your documentation on hand so that you report it stolen to the police, your insurance company and your network provider.

Stolen Phone FAQs