Yesterday my iPhone 4 was stolen. It was two weeks old. The poor baby was snagged from Starbucks by map-wielding hoodlums in a classic distraction trick. As I used it to record an interview, they swooped in with tube maps, seeming to ask for directions. One distracted us, the other swiped my iPhone 4. In a minute, it was gone. But with MobileMe and its handy Find My iPhone feature, surely I’d be able to track it and the thieves down. Well, yes and no…

Find My iPhone is a clever tool. Tapping into your iPhone’s GPS, it gives you the current location and lets you pinpoint it on Google Maps. Sat in the Starbucks on Piccadilly, I could see my phone was mere streets away. My friends converged on the spot and I tweeted the location in the hope that followers might be nearby to spy the light-fingered fiends who filched my beloved iPhone 4 (a little dramatic, I’ll admit).

But once the posse had reached the square where the iPhone 4 had been, it was already gone. Find My iPhone just isn’t real time enough to keep track of the movements of a pair of fleet-footed felons looking to fence a stolen iPhone double quick. I kept tracking and the phone moved to Baker Street. In the absence of Sherlock Holmes personal number, one of my friends jumped into a taxi and gave chase. The phone stayed in one location for a while and then…

The thieves turned it off. By this point I had got the phone blocked and locked it using Find My iPhone. The iPhone 4 was temporarily useless to the thieves. Again with Find My iPhone, I fired off a message that popped up on the phone: “The police are tracking this phone. You will be found. Return it.” No response. The messages got tougher until finally, certain that the iPhone 4 was not coming back, I pushed the proverbial red button – the remote wipe. All the contacts, data and apps are safe in the cloud but that phone was toast. Everything was erased. Hurrah!

And yet: the thieves had won. The iPhone 4 was theirs and ready to be restored at the nearest PC or Mac. Hell, they could even swan into an Apple Store and get it done for them before selling it or waltzing around town with it. Find My iPhone had not rained virtual napalm down on my new enemies. It had just temporarily inconvenienced them.

That’s the problem with Find My iPhone. Ultimately, the thieves can still use that phone, repurpose that hardware for themselves. What we need is a nuclear option. If you know you’ve lost the phone and might get it back eventually then the soft option of a remote wipe is just fine. So is the idea that you track its location and display a friendly message. But if you know thieves have your phone you should be able to burn that sucker.

I wanted an option to call in an air strike on my lost iPhone 4. “You are dead to me now you’ve got those stranger’s fingers fondling your apps…” Apple needs to add a feature that allows you to render the phone completely useless – virtually concreting up the guts, making it impossible to restore, impossible to upgrade, showing nothing but a static screen saying: “The person in possession of this phone is a thief.”

Find My iPhone let me document an interesting chase movie across London – a group of journalists and PRs trying to hunt down some crooks but the ending was disappointing. We didn’t get the phone back. I lost my iPhone 4, the criminals got one and the tracking was just a sideshow in the meantime. That phone should be deader than disco. Find My iPhone didn’t help me do anything other than see their escape route. Thanks a bunch Steve, I’ll be in later to buy another iPhone 4. SIGH.

If you want to follow the chase on Twitter, just hit this #bbiPhone4 link.

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  • Zed

    Get an Android!!!

    (PS sorry about your loss)

    • mic

      Hi Zed,

      Thanks :)

      How do you think having an Android phone would help? Are the remote wipe tools better? Really keen to know.

      Thanks,

      Mic

      • novak84

        You are aware that it gets blocked when you report it losty/stolen, aren't you? So no need for the UK air force to bomb the f'ckers.

        • mic

          I demand retribution!

          But yes, fair point.

      • Rony

        “How do you think having an Android phone would help?”

        Answer: less likely to be stolen than the way too popular iPhone…

  • novak84

    The phone will be blocked on any UK network unless they manage to change the IMEI, but they will probably just ship it abroad where it will work just fine.

    • mic

      Yes. That's the likely destination for it.

  • Dave

    If you report the phone as stolen, the network operators can block it based on its IMEI…

    • mic

      Yep. Aware of that. But it's still not the divine retribution you want when your phone is nicked.

  • Roy

    Many foreign networks also block on IMEI afaik, although operators in some parts of Africa still don't. I use Wavesucure on my Android which allows me to not only lock it down, bar sims, backup/wipe the data and track it but also if I leave it open track sims used and calls made. The phone is rooted and the only way to get rid of my security is flash another rom, easy enough to do if you know what you are doing but beyond the talents of your average phone nicking scum and the person they are likely to sell it to.

    • mic

      Thanks Roy. Interesting stuff!

  • Sad

    Mine was nabbed over the weekend and I followed a similar tactic to no avail. Damn thieves should all rot.

    • mic

      So frustrating isn't it?

  • http://twitter.com/markbyrn markbyrn

    If there was some mechanism to disable the device up to the point where it required a Apple technician to verify ownership and restore the phone, that would be good. But a mechanism to permanently destroy the phone is a bad idea since somebody might maliciously or inadvertently activate the 'self-destruct'.

    Another possibility would be for Apple to implement a Lojack for Laptops type feature in the firmware that would surreptitiously cause the stolen iPhone to send it's GPS location to Apple servers. Unfortunately, like a laptop, the chance of recovery is still pretty slim.

    The best option is prevention and attaching a chain or lanyard to your future phone might be in order.

    …Get an Android!!!…

    Why is that fandroid? Because nobody will bother to steal it?

  • Gyer

    Cry baby. If Apple enables a soft self-destruct, it also means someone else can hack in to soft self-destruct. Bad idea.

    • mic

      Thanks for your constructive comment, Gyer. Please do let me know when you have something stolen so I can revel in your misery.

  • Sarah

    I had mine stolen from me today… again, Find My iPhone is pretty useless so it was wipe and goodbye for me. *hangs head*

  • I need to finish this

    My brother has had his stolen on new years day(but new year eve for me) and he called us as they got bk too there hotel, he asked me to call giff gaff to cancell the payments so on so on, but giff gaff is so useful, they don’t have a calling system! U have “too ask the community” and the only way you could cancel it if the fone was in the uk and I had his account details, well he was using a pay fone from the hotel that was 1 euro for a damn minute! He asked us too then try and do it through the bank, they couldn’t do it. So he sed leave that for now. but as we eventually called the hotel too speek to my bro, I asked what about the mobile me and fone home, he said that’s useless, the networks are not working so it shall only work when in wi-fi zone. *anoyed face* . But thankfully he took his iPad with him and decided too imesseage me, as we remeberd!! he asked me too find out if our gadget cover wa okey for out of uk, thankfully it was so he’s now trying too contact the French police and our insurance company. I’m very worried for him thinking if this steeler who watched him finish on the gown too me and then put his fone in his front poket and then reach in and run

    • Done

      Reach in and run away . All kinds of things have been going through my mind if this steeler is some kind of hacker and can hack passwords, it was only a 4 digit number//: I’m not sure what’s happen at the police station an so in, but I shall mention the red button thing on clearing all contacts and apps!!:) this has actually helped. Thanks.

  • Ilovehenry8

    My iPhone was just stolen the other day and this article has articulated exactly how I felt- plus making me laugh instead of crying over my poor phone! Thanks- good writing!

  • Yannakins

    I couldn’t agree more! Same thing happened to last week.

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