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What to Do If Your iPad Gets Stolen

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If your iPad was stolen from you, here’s what you need to do in order to keep your information safe and hopefully get your device back.

Millions of mobile devices get lost or stolen every year. In fact, between January 1 and September 23 of 2012, 11,447 devices were reported stolen in New York City alone.

Usually, if you lose your device, there’s not much you can do about it other than to try and go back and find it. If it’s stolen, you’re kind of out of luck, unless you can find a way to somehow locate it and get it back from the perpetrator. Luckily, device manufacturers are adding ways for owners to track and manage their devices if they ever do get lost or stolen, giving users a fighting chance at least.

There are a handful of things that you’ll need to keep in mind and make sure that you do whenever your iPad does end up stolen. Many users simply resort to tracking their stolen device using Find My iPhone, but don’t spend too much time trying to track down the device and the criminal, as there are other tasks that you need to do if you’re iPad gets stolen.

Here’s a list of tasks that you should do (in no particular order) when you discover that your iPad has been stolen.

Track It with Find My iPhone

Find My iPhone is a service that comes free with every iOS device and Mac computer, and it allows you to track your iPhone or iPad, whether it was lost or stolen. Of course, it only works when the device is on and it has a signal, so if your iPad gets stolen and the thief was smart enough to turn off the device or put it in Airplane Mode, Find My iPhone won’t work, but it’ll at least give you a fighting chance in case the thief isn’t that smart. Here’s how to use it.

find-my-ipad

Head to iCloud.com and log in using your Apple ID information. You’ll be greeted with a handful of apps arranged similarly to how your iPad home screen is laid out. Click on the Find My iPhone icon and you’ll be taken to a full-screen map with dots representing where your various Apple devices are located (including Mac computers, if you have any).

You can click on Devices at the top to view all of your Apple devices, and when you select your stolen one, you’ll have the same three options as the Find My iPhone app: Play Sounds, Lost Mode and Erase iPad.

Personally, using Find My iPhone would be the first thing I do, but again, don’t spend a lot of time fiddling around with it. Instead, quickly log on and see if you can track your iPad. If you know it’s location, close out of Find My iPhone and move on to the next step.

Call the Police & File a Report

Be sure to call the police and not only file a report, but also tell them that you know the location of the stolen device if you know where it is from using Find My iPhone. If that’s the case, they’ll usually send an officer out to help retrieve the stolen iPad and catch the perp. Under no circumstances should you pursue the perp on your own, as you have no idea what they’re capable of. Let the police handle it.

iPad-Air

Otherwise, there is very little that the police can do if you don’t know the location of the stolen device, but filing a report can help when dealing with Apple or your insurance company.

Remotely Erase Your Stolen iPad

At this point, if you can’t locate your stolen iPad and the police can’t help you find it, you’re probably at the point where you’ll never see it again, which is why it would be a good time to remotely wipe your stolen iPad if you can using iCloud and Find My iPhone.

iPad-mini-Retina

Like before when you logged into iCloud.com to try and locate your stolen iPad, there is an option to remotely wipe your device, called Erase iPad. Clicking that will remotely wipe your device so that the thief can’t access any personal information. This is ideal if you have sensitive information on your iPad. While most thieves aren’t really interested in your personal information anyway, it’s still a good step to take whenever one of your devices gets stolen.

However, keep in mind that erasing your stolen iPad will prevent you from using Find My iPhone to locate the device in the future. At this point, it’s officially time to say, “bye bye.”

Call Your Carrier

After you remotely wiped your iPad, be sure to call your mobile carrier to cancel service on the iPad, if you have an LTE model, that way if the thief can access your device, you won’t rack up any charges for data usage, and will instead shut down service and prevent him from using the LTE.

verizon-customer-support

Plus, if you have a police report that you can show the carrier, they’ll be more likely to work with you and take action quicker than they would normally. You usually have to prove it was stolen anyway in order for the carrier to take action, and the police report you filed will do the trick.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Elisha Joshua kabenla

    06/01/2015 at 12:46 am

    My iPad has stolen in Ghana, I have icloud but find my iPad is not on , teaf can wipe my iPad ?

  2. Lima

    08/23/2015 at 7:52 pm

    Wouldn’t it be better to lock it so that even if you can’t have it back, they won’t be able to enjoy ‘their’ iPad either. This happened to my iPad Air 2 so heartbroken

  3. Smalling

    02/19/2016 at 4:37 pm

    How do I go about locking my ipad? find my ipad is not on. I do not have the latest ios.

  4. Pheonix

    04/03/2016 at 6:41 am

    How do I track my iPad if it’s stolen and all location and find my iPhone apps and settings were off and I didn’t have a passcode set? Surely all the their needs to do is do a factory reset and then I have no way of finding it do I?

  5. Manapo Mopeli

    03/03/2017 at 2:56 am

    Hi, I recently lost my iPad pro, and had not recovers my iCloud account.

    How can I get assistance in recovering it?

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