AARP Hearing Center
What Do I Do When I Lose My Phone?
Take these steps to protect your data and maybe, hopefully, get the device back
Here’s What to Do if You Lose Your Phone
VIDEO: How to Track Your Lost Phone
Key takeaways
- Use Lost Mode or a similar feature to lock the phone and share contact information with the person who finds it.
- If theft is suspected, report it to the police and remotely erase the data.
- Before a phone is lost, you can use built-in tracking tools to improve your chances of recovering it.
AARP members and readers are invited to submit pressing technology questions they’d like me to tackle in my Tech Guru column, including issues around devices, security, social media and how all the puzzle pieces fit together.
This week’s column focuses on tools that may help you reunite with a missing phone.
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I’m paranoid about losing my smartphone. Are there things I can do to maximize the odds of getting it back if it is lost or stolen, and minimize the chance it will be lost in the first place?
Losing your phone is one of the worst feelings in the world, and not just because the handset likely didn’t come cheap and now needs to be replaced. Our phones are repositories for precious family photos, music collections and, for many of us, credit cards. So you’re understandably concerned about security.
Hopefully, those pictures, tunes and other digital resources are conveniently backed up somewhere, whether on a physical drive and/or in the cloud. At the very least, you can retrieve all your data.
Getting the phone itself back may be iffier, especially if it was stolen. If that’s the case, report the theft to law enforcement and your wireless carrier, then follow the guidelines I’ll address below to protect your data.
If you absent-mindedly left the device somewhere and you’re lucky, perhaps a Good Samaritan will find and return it. Of course, they would have to know how to find you, which is why you should proactively enable the built-in Find My tracking tool on iPhone, and similar Find Hub or Samsung Find tools on Android. Even if all efforts to locate the device fail, those tools still offer ways to protect your data from prying eyes.
Find My on iPhone
Apple’s Find My app can be used to locate people, as well as missing electronics, handbags, keys and other items. But what we’re discussing here is using the tool to find a lost iPhone.
Before the phone ever goes missing, you want to enable that feature, assuming it isn’t already on. Start at Settings | tap your name at the top of the screen | Find My | Find My iPhone.
Then you’ll want to turn on a few additional settings: Find My network, which helps locate the phone even when the handset is offline, and Send Last Location, which preserves the device’s last known location when the battery reaches “critically low” status.
Consider also enabling Stolen Device Protection, which adds an extra layer of security. When your device isn’t in a familiar location, such as your home or office, it forces you, or the thief who nabbed it, to use either Face ID or Touch ID biometrics to perform certain functions, including accessing passwords or credit cards. Even if a crook knows your passcode, they would also need your face or fingerprint to proceed, which, unless you’re Tom Cruise in one of the Mission Impossible movies, seems highly unlikely.
What’s more, there will be at least a one-hour wait before a thief who somehow knows your passcode can change your Apple Account password.
Turn on Stolen Device Protection in Settings | Face ID & Passcode | Enter your passcode | Stolen Device Protection.
You can determine whether to require the security delay when you are removed from familiar locations, or all the time when you (or that bad guy) want to change security settings. You will still be able to use your phone during the one-hour delay, but turning the iPhone off or restarting it will restart the delay.
If you’ve taken these steps and your phone is now lost, you have a few ways to leverage the Find My tool. If you have access to a family member’s iPhone and they are in your Family Sharing circle, or you own a Mac, iPad, Apple Watch or other Apple device, you can use Find My to play a sound on your phone remotely. This way, if the phone is somehow still close by — maybe hidden under a couch cushion — you may hear it yourself. If it is elsewhere and you are fortunate, a helpful stranger will hear the sound and pick it up.
If you don’t have another Apple device handy, you can access Find My online at iCloud.com. Sign in with your Apple Account.
Protecting your data from afar. Wherever you access Find My, highlight the device you’re looking for — in this instance, the iPhone — and tap either Lost Mode or Lost iPhone.
Lost Mode remotely locks the phone so that no one can access your personal information. Apple will send a confirmation email to your Apple Account email address, and you will be able to create a message that lets anyone who finds the device know that it is lost and how to get in touch.
What’s more, while the alerts or notifications that you would otherwise receive on the phone are silenced under Lost Mode, the device can still receive phone calls and FaceTime calls, which can be helpful if you call and the kind stranger picks up.
In the meantime, as a safety precaution, payment cards in the Wallet app and other services are suspended. And the device location, if known, will be plotted on a map.
If you are truly concerned that it is in the hands of a criminal, tap Erase to wipe the phone’s contents remotely.
Find Hub on Android
The Android equivalent to Find My is called Find Hub (formerly Find My Device) and shares many of the capabilities of its iOS counterpart. With another Android phone or tablet, or via a web browser, you can use Find Hub to remotely plot a lost phone’s location on a map (if known) and get directions there. You can also play a sound that will help you or someone else find the handset, and tap either Mark as lost or Secure device, depending on the device. You can display a message or phone number on the lock screen so the person who picks it up can contact you.
Google uses a combination of GPS, Wi-Fi and cellular towers to locate the missing Android phone.
Whether found or not, you can lock the device from afar, require a PIN, pattern or password to unlock it, sign you out of your Google Account on the device and remove payment cards from Google Wallet.
As an additional precaution, if your search mission goes dark, you can tap Factory reset [name of device] to return the phone to its state right out of the box.
When there’s a happier outcome and a phone marked as lost is found, you’ll be notified through the Find Hub network.
Go to Google.com/Android/Find and sign in with your Google Account to begin your search.
If Find Hub is not already on your device, you can download it from the Google Play Store.
I’ll point out here that Samsung owners have an additional option for locating a missing Galaxy phone. It has capabilities similar to those other tools and is aptly named Samsung Find.
Bonus tip: Android feature can sense the moment your device is snatched
A crook comes out of nowhere, yanks away your phone and dashes off. If you’ve enabled the Theft Detection Lock feature on Android phones, those telltale signs of theft are detected by AI and motion sensors, and immediately, the screen will lock.
To get started, go to Settings | [Your name] Google services and preferences | All services | Theft protection | Theft Protection Lock.
The feature is designed to work in public and thus isn’t supposed to kick in when you’re connected to a stable Wi-Fi or Bluetooth network at home or in the office.
If a crime wasn’t committed and the feature mistakenly locked your phone, you can always manually unlock it with your PIN or password.
The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.
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