How to protect your iOS devices from theft

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

How to protect your iOS devices from theft

8/14/2012 12:00:00 AM Neil No comments

Are you a person who always forgot where did you put a thing, say your phone? If you just nodded, then read on. I will teach you how to protect your iOS devices from the prickly hands of others.

You might be already familiar with the icon above. Yes, that’s Find My iPhone. First thing you’ll do is to set-up Find My iPhone on your device using iCloud. After that, you’re done! NOT. Pick-pockets and thieves could simply disable the Find My iPhone service on your device to prevent you from locating it. What should I do? Well, you will have to use Restrictions. Follow the steps below, assuming that you’re done setting up Find My iPhone.

NOTE: Instructions posted here is based on an iPod touch running iOS 6.
1. Go to Settings, General, Restrictions. You will be asked to set a Restrictions Passcode for the first time.

2. Under Allow Changes, tap Accounts.

3. Tap Don’t Allow Changes.

And just like that, the iCloud, Accounts (under Mail, Contacts, Calendars), Messages, FaceTime, iTunes & App Stores, Photo Stream (under Photos & Camera), Twitter, Facebook, as well as the Find My iPhone (under Privacy, Location Services) settings will become disabled and greyed out. You and anyone will not be able to change any of those settings unless you select Allow Changes again under Restrictions.

By the way, speaking of Photo Stream – you may want to turn on Photo Streams before turning on the restrictions. Who knows, if a thief snagged your device and took self-photos, you will be able to see his or her face!

While the last will be probably be useful for iPhones and iPads with a cellular data connection, you may just forget about setting a passcode lock on your iPod touch and/or iPad with a Wi-Fi only connection so just in case, the thief will have a chance to find a wireless network and connect to it thus allowing your to still locate them.

UPDATE: I forgot one thing. If you have a jailbroken device then you’re in for this. Open Cydia, and search for ResetAllKiller tweak. That will basically grey out and disable the Reset All Settings buttons on the Settings. This will make it a little bit hard for the part of the thief to completely wipe your device and prevent you from tracking it. Here it is in action.