Stolen/Lost Ipad – What should I do?

Lost your ipad and wondering what you should do next? Whether you misplaced it or it was stolen, the pain of losing your iPad is real, but first things first, the most important is to protect your privacy. After making sure that your accounts are secure, only then you should try to retrieve your ipad back. Lastly, try to come to the terms with the loss. This blog post will show you how to react, and shares my own experience of losing my ipad.

First things to do for your lost iPad

1. (If it is stolen) Note your serial number and inform the police. A step-by-step tutorial can be found here 
2.  (If you have find my iPad set up) Remote lock or wipe your iPad, send message and check your ipad location using icloud.
3. (If you have nothing set up) Send an email to your own account accessible to iPad with your contact details so that the person who picked it up can see it. Also do the same for facebook and other media accessible from your iPad.
4. Proceed to change passwords for data and accounts accessible from your iPad

The fact is, precaution is still better than cure. A very important lesson I took away from this saga is that it would have been less stressful if I had set up find my ipad or at the minimum set up a passcode and include my contact details on the wallpaper. If I have an iPad again, I would be less lazy and set up the necessary precautions.

Protect your privacy

When I lost my ipad, my very first thought beside the bite of the material loss ($600+!), was that the content in all my emails, notes, dropbox, facebook accounts were compromised. You could be in the same situation, possibly with more accounts accessible through your ipad. Knowing that somebody else can have access to all my data,  I immediately regret not taking the additional precaution of setting a passcode.

Passcode lock

Setting a passcode takes less than 2 minutes to set it up. If you are reading this, and you haven’t implemented a passcode to your ipad yet, do it right NOW. Go to your ipad:

Settings>> General>> Passcode Lock

And input your passcode lock. The iPad also have a additional security to wipe out your iPad after 10 incorrect tries.

Now the problem with the passcode lock is that a honest person cannot return it to you as he will have no clue how to contact you. What you can do is to download free ipad wallpaper apps and add in your contact information on the wallpaper. An important thing to note is to make sure that your number would not be blocked by the passcode dialog box.

Another point to take note is that the passcode can prevent users from using your accounts freely, but not prevent them from taking over your iPad. It does not take a smart thief to figure out that he could break the passcode by restoring the iPad to factory default settings entirely.

Find my ipad

A stronger form of lost precaution would be to setup find my ipad service provided by apple. This service allows you to locate your ipad from a PC, display a message on your ipad, and even beep to help you find it. Moreover, it allows you to set a passcode remotely as well as to delete all your date remotely. The beauty of the remote wipe is that it overcomes the limitation of the security feature of wiping out your iPad after 10 incorrect tries in which your data could still be accessed by plugging into the PC. Thank you Apple!

You can find out more about it at http://www.apple.com/ipad/find-my-ipad.html and set it up in a jiffy.

Worst Case scenario of losing your ipad

Summarizing your potential losses in an engineering style

• Monetary loss of $600+++
• Loss of information only saved locally in iPad
• Compromise of private information which could be priceless
• Misuse of private accounts

Thankfully Apple has a security feature to prompt for password everytime a purchase is made, this should deter thieves from going on a shopping spree. But more than the monetary loss, it is apparent that bigger loss could be inflicted through the loss and compromise of private information and also the misuse of your accounts. The precautions mentioned beforehand should be able to deter most of these potentially huge losses.

In my next article, I will share with you some of my reflection and lessons learnt post-event.