5th gen iPod Touch stolen...couple questions

[notposting]

Hey, have a few questions about secure these things are, background after.

Questions:

Was talking with someone and they said it is possible to get past the activation lock stuff, one question I didn't ask though, would that still lock them out of legit access to the App store and such? IE sideload only?

Also, if someone was doing that sort of thing, would it completely wipe the iPod so at least any data on the thing is gone?

Background:

Grabbed my wife a new 32GB Touch back in March (the turquoise blue), put a case on it, glass screen protector, replaced her ancient 8GB 4th gen.

Sure enough, she went to help her sister move on September 1st. Evidently it fell out of her pocket but after searching around the yard, road, house, back at the doctor's office she was at, her work...nothing. Nor did the THREE cable guys who were hooking up internet and TV say anything.

Checked that afternoon and her MS account was already pinging from new IP's within a couple of hours. Turned on Lost mode, started changing passwords on everything, had a couple Lost My iPhone updates over the next week, a suburb several towns over, bot in the same area.

Never hit the Erase setting yet, on the off chance whoever picked it up would do the right thing, or at least just leave it somewhere for someone else to do the right thing, but I think that ship has sailed.

She is back on the old 4th gen, which had been wiped so we could Facetime with it. Need to replace the battery, it's toast. Apple needs to add "Electro-Shock" to the options on Find My iPhone. :hmm:

 

[TheStu]

To my understanding, Apple can't even get past the activation lock, so the odds of a random person who just picked it up being able to do it are quite low.

It sounds like there wasn't a passcode on the device.

Is it locked now?
Have you reported the location data to the police to potentially get it recovered?
Are they taking any pictures with it, and are those pictures being uploaded to her icloud account?
Did she have the setting enabled to require password to make purchases?
Any banking stuff on that thing?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

To my understanding, Apple can't even get past the activation lock, so the odds of a random person who just picked it up being able to do it are quite low.

Apple can, but they will usually refuse to or pretend they don't unless they know you pretty well. (When I was an iPad wrangler for the local school district, one of the other guys in our IT department used to work for Apple, and he knew people.)

It sounds like there wasn't a passcode on the device.

Is it locked now?
Have you reported the location data to the police to potentially get it recovered?
Are they taking any pictures with it, and are those pictures being uploaded to her icloud account?
Did she have the setting enabled to require password to make purchases?
Any banking stuff on that thing?

Ouch, yeah. Passcode and iCloud tracking for mobile apple devices. ++.

 

[notposting]

It didn't have a pin unlock enabled st the time, though I had put one in for her previously. I did go into her iCloud account immediately and get it set into "Lost" mode - requiring a pin/passcode, it said would use an existing one if there was one, so I think it would have used that. That also put the message on screen, ie "Hi this iPod is lost, please call me at 123-456-7890, thanks!"

Promptly changed all the login info which was fun. 2FA is a fun and exciting part of the tedium!

As for the activation lock, yeah, I need to ask because as far as I could see, it seems pretty well unbeatable. He said the newer stuff would work though, plugged in and the device would boot several times, etc. But I dunno. Wasn't about to visit any of the websites that might actually offer that stuff since I'm sure they would be burrowing into my computer as well.

Haven't seen it pop online since about the first week after. With it being WiFi only, hard to get anything more out of it...whoever it was probably threw it away if they couldn't do anything with it. Grrrrr.

 

[notposting]

Also, our then 4-year old son and I surprised her with it. We went out and he picked the color (which she loves) and he asks about the missing iPod occasionally. It adds to the general discontent with humanity.