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How to: Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

Elena Santos

Elena Santos

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When I first learned about MobileMe, I wondered who would be willing to pay $99 a year for services (email, photo gallery, online storage) that you could get cheaper elsewhere, if not totally free. But now that I have an iPhone 4, I see a powerful reason to sign up for MobileMe: the Find My iPhone utility.

Besides its most common usage as backup and syncing tool, MobileMe has an incredible added value – at least for me: it includes the so called Find My iPhone, a feature that enables you to locate a missing or stolen iPhone, display messages on its screen and what’s more, even lock it or wipe its contents remotely. This awesome feature needs a bit of set-up, but nothing you can’t do by yourself if you follow these easy steps:

1. First of all, you obviously need to sign up for MobileMe. If the $99/year fee is still too much for you, don’t worry: you’ve got a 2-month trial period before the first payment is due.

Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

2. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and add a new MobileMe account.

Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

3. Once the MobileMe account is created,  you may configure the elements you want to sync with MobileMe. You can freely choose any of them, but make sure the Find My iPhone option is enabled.

Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

4. Next, set the Fetch New Data option is set to Push, and that the schedule is not set to “manually”.

Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

5.  Your iPhone is now ready to be located. Log in with your credentials on the MobileMe website and go to Find My iPhone. You’ll probably need to enter your password again.

Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

6. After a few seconds your iPhone will be located on the map, along with a few options: display a message on the screen, play a sound, lock the device or wipe its contents.

Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

7. This is how a message sent via MobileMe looks on the iPhone screen.

Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

8. If you don’t have access to a computer, don’t worry: you can still search for your missing iPhone from a friend’s iPhone or an iPod Touch. All you need to do is install the Find My iPhone app from iTunes and enter your MobileMe username and password.

Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

9. The Find My iPhone app will display the current location of your iPhone on the screen, and also includes the same options as the web-based application.

Locate your stolen iPhone with MobileMe

If you’ve ever been robbed you’ll understand the importance of this feature. Not only does it give you a chance to recover your missing device (or at least making it useless for the ‘new owner’ thanks to the remote lock function), but it also protects your privacy. Just think about all the information – emails, photos, contact list – you have on your iPhone, and how much you’ll miss the remote wipe option if it ever goes missing. That’s why now I think it’s worth paying that $99 a year.

Elena Santos

Elena Santos

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