What To Do And What Not To Do If You Find a Lost iPhone

If you find a lost iPhone there are a lot of things you can do to help reunite it with its owner. But some of the advice you'll read online will lead you in the wrong direction. Learn the best way to return a lost iPhone.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me tell you what to do if you find a lost iPhone. 
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about it. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts. 
So I've talked before how to prepare your iPhone in case you loose it. For instance you want to turn On Find My iPhone and then you can use that method to locate it or put it into Lost Mode and so on. 
But what happens if you find a lost iPhone. There's a ton of really bad information out there online about what to do if you find a lost iPhone. So let's talk about what you should do but also what you probably shouldn't do if you find a lost iPhone. 
So when thinking about what is the best way to get a lost iPhone back to its owner I've come to the conclusion that the absolute best is to turn it in where you found it. In other words you find it in a restaurant, turn it into the waiter or the host or maybe the bartender. If you find it at school turn it into the front office. If you find it in a shop turn it into the checkout clerk or the manager. If someone is looking for their iPhone they're going to retrace their steps to try to figure out where they left it and that's where they are going to look for it. They are going to ask these very people if somebody turned it in an iPhone. Taking it away from where you found it will make it much less likely they will ever be reunited with their iPhone. So the most important thing is to not remove it from where you found it but to try to leave it there with somebody else that will watch after it and try to help reunite it with its owner. I shouldn't have to say this but it's important that you do this immediately and I have to say it because so many people post online about finding an iPhone and then keeping it for days, maybe not even doing anything to look for the owner and then asking for help in trying to do so. If the owner is looking for their iPhone they are going to look for it immediately. As a matter of fact when a day to two goes by they may have already killed the iPhone with Find My iPhone and maybe even filed an insurance claim. It's too late to reunite them with it. You want to immediately turn it in wherever it is you found it if at all possible. Don't delay if you really want to help out. 
Also keep in mind there's a good chance that somebody at that location is the one that lost the iPhone. It could be one of the staff of the restaurant or one of the people working at the school or in the shop that lost it. They are there all the time so the chances of a lost iPhone belonging to one of those people is pretty high. So turning it in immediately may actually get immediate results. 
Another strategy when it's not apparent where to turn the iPhone in is to simply look around right there. The most likely time somebody will be looking for a lost iPhone is exactly the time that you find it. Later on it gets less and less. So, if you simply look around, hold the iPhone up, look for somebody that is looking for a lost object you may actually be able to reunite it with its owner almost immediately. 
Now another thing you may want to do if option 1 isn't available to you or maybe do it in conjunction with option 1 is to just take a look at the Lock Screen on the phone because somebody who lost their iPhone can use the Find My functionality at iCloud.com or on another device to put the phone into Lost Mode. When they do so they can provide a message to appear on the Lock Screen and the message can include contact information or where to take the phone or who to turn it into. So just by looking at the Lock Screen you may get the one and only clue that you need to actually reunite the phone with its owner. It's worth maybe glancing at it as you actually try to find somebody to turn the phone into.
Now the other thing you can do is look for the Emergency Contact information in the phone. So, the phone doesn't need to be unlocked for this. For instance, here I've got a phone and it's in locked mode. If I try to unlock it, it won't unlock. As a matter of fact I can just wait for the Face ID to timeout there and I have the passcode, but I don't know the passcode. But if you look at the bottom left if the owner has set emergency contact information there will be an Emergency Button at the bottom left. Tap that, look for Medical ID at the bottom left. This will take you to a screen that may have all sorts of medical information for the person. The idea is that if the person is unconscious that a medical professional can consult this to see if they have allergies or conditions and so on. But also at the bottom, if you scroll down usually, you'll see Emergency Contact information. This is great because it is not the person. It's not the phone that you're actually holding that has this number. It's their closest friend or family member, whomever. So you can then call that number using your phone and hopefully talk to that person and then be able to get the phone back to the owner that way. 
Now let's talk about if the phone is unlocked. So much information online deals with this. But it is so unlikely to happen. First of all, nobody should have an unlocked phone. There should always be a passcode, Touch ID, and Face ID in use. But it is really hard to have your phone completely unlocked nowadays because so many services demand that your phone have a passcode set. So just about everybody or any phones you find is going to have a passcode and you won't be able to get into it. But if you can get into it and you want to devote the time the first place I would look is in the Contacts App. When you look in the Contacts App at the very top should be that person's ID and you'll be able to go to it and get email or physical address or maybe alternate phone numbers for them. If you don't see that at the top you could always scroll down and look for the ME next to a contact. Also, look for any asterisks because those are emergency contact people and those are the first people you should go to. 
Now I know people all start by going to the Phone App and at the bottom you can click on Favorites to see who the favorite contacts are and maybe try to call one from the phone or you can go to Recents and see if there is a number that is called all the time. If you want to put the effort in you can try to call those people. 
Now one of the reasons if I found a lost iPhone and it was unlocked I probably wouldn't do any of this is I just don't like going through people's stuff. So I would try using method number 1 by just turning it in or use that emergency contact info or the person's own info to try to get in touch with them if the phone is somehow unlocked. 
Now let's talk about some other strategies that I hear people mentioning but I think are pretty bad ideas. One is to turn the iPhone in at the local police station. I think this is a pretty bad idea. You should be turning it in where you found it. This is where the person is going to go to look for it. They're not going to go and try to figure out where the local police station is and go there and ask. If they do there's a pretty good chance that the person there behind the desk isn't going to have the time or may know where the iPhone is that somebody turned in before. 
Now if the person is using Find My to try to find their iPhone then it could lead them to the police station so that's good. But whether or not the police actually have the time or process in place to get the iPhone back to that person, even if they traced it there, well that's questionable. Probably depends on the actual police department or maybe the people working at that specific time. So I would really avoid this at all costs. The only time I would use the police station as a place to go is, say, if all these other techniques have completely failed, including the ones I'm going to mention later, and you just want to get rid of the iPhone, you don't want to keep it, this could be like the last resort just to get it out of your hands. 
So here's something definitely not to try. A lot of people say take the iPhone to the Apple Store and give it to them. First of all there aren't that many Apple Stores so it is not always convenient to go and find the closest Apple Store, drive to it, and give them the phone. But second Apple isn't in the property recovery business. They are not setup to actually reunite people with their iPhones. Nobody is going to take that phone and then try to get it back to the owner. It is just going to sit at the Apple Store. Maybe if the person tracks it there using Find My iPhone and an employee is helpful enough there they may give it to them. But there is a lot of people working at these Apple Stores and it is unlikely the person you're talking to is going to know anything about an iPhone that was turned in earlier. I would definitely not take it to the Apple Store. 
Now there are some people that say call Apple Support and they'll help you. They won't. I have heard that sometimes Apple Support refers you to the insurance company that handles the Apple Care Plus insurance where people can get a new iPhone if they've lost theirs. I have heard that if you talk to them they can give you a pretty involved process for getting the iPhone to them which is going to take up a lot of your time. It's just not worth it. Go all the back to Number 1. Just turn it in where you found it. I've also heard people mention going to a mobile phone store and turning it in there. Now I think this is only slightly better than going to an Apple Store. The advantage of going to a mobile phone store there may only be a handful or maybe just one employee working. So turning a phone in then having somebody come by later who tracked it there may have a pretty high chance of that employee just handing it over to them. If you're going to do this I encourage you to look at the top left corner of the Lock Screen and see what carrier the person is using on their phone. If it says Verizon try to take it to a Verizon Store. If I says AT&T take it to an AT&T Store. But the carrier itself is not going to do anything to try to reunite the user with their phone. So it is basically just a way to get it out of your hands. 
Now there are people that will mention this slightly useful technique which is to post to an online group. You neighborhood probably has an online group at a site like Facebook or Next Door or something like that. They can always post there that you found a lost iPhone and maybe look to see if anybody is asking if somebody has found their lost iPhone. It maybe worth doing especially if for some reason you can't do the first one, like you find it in a park or on the street and there is just no place to turn it into. But I wouldn't hold out much hope that this will reunite the phone with its owner because really only a small percentage of your community is probably involved in any kind of online community. 
Now the last option I want to mention isn't the worst option but it is not a good one. It's to hold onto the iPhone. So if you can't find anybody to turn it into because it was lost, say, on the street and you decide that the best way for this to get back to its owner is for you to hold onto it and hope that they use Find My iPhone then you can keep the iPhone for a period of time. I would make sure it is attached to a charger so the battery doesn't die. Make sure it is at a place in your home where it is getting a good signal. Then I would periodically check the Lock Screen to see if they have put a message there on the screen. One problem I've got with this is that you may think you've found a lost iPhone but the person who lost it may think that somebody stole it from them. They may not realize they left it on a bench in a park. They may think that somebody picked their pocket. When they trace it to your house they may even have brought other people, like friends or police, with them to retrieve their iPhone from who they think is the thief. Posting in a local online community is a great way to kind of prove that you didn't steal it. I mean why would you post six hours earlier that you found this iPhone and you want to get it back to its owner if you actually stole the iPhone. Right. Also, I kind of like the idea of posting a sign on your front door, for instance, saying Lost Your iPhone, I Found it at the Park or whatever, and then that would change the expectation when somebody arrives and sees that sign there and was thinking there was a thief and now they are thinking, now wait a minute maybe I just lost it. But again I would only do this if there is no place to turn it in where you found the iPhone which is the more likely place for the person to look for it. If there  was nothing on the Lock Screen, if there was no emergency contact information that you could find and you basically have no other options and you feel you've got the time to kind of help out. Then, even then, after a period of time it might be worthwhile to take it somewhere, like for instance the police or even the Apple Store if you have to just to get the iPhone out of your hands. At least at that point you won't be responsible for recycling it when the time comes. 
Again, the top thing to do is to just turn it in at the location where you found it. You may feel you want to put more effort into helping somebody out but turning it in is probably the best way to do that, even though it is the minimum amount of effort on your part. I hope you find this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 8 Responses to “What To Do And What Not To Do If You Find a Lost iPhone”

Ed Mullery

8 months ago

I remember one of your TEH podcasts where you relayed the story of your daughter’s lost phone, and the odyssey you went through to get it back and get a new one. Do you know which episode that was? I would like to listen again. I thought it was very entertaining.

Chris in CT

Very helpful info! It introduced me to iPhone Emergency information. I also wish I knew about this last year when I found a lost cell phone in a park.
What suggestions can you offer for Android phones? Do they have the same or similar lock screen and Find My features?

Gary Rosenzweig

Chris: Sorry but Android phones are outside my area of expertise.

Henning

Hi Gary, are there no "Lost and Found" Places in the US? Here in Germany you can bring found Items to the Townhall. The Office then posts all found items in the Citynews once a week.

Rick Isaacs

In your 12/18/17 video 'Setting Up and Using iPhone Lost Mode' you describe how to setup an iPhone
to use Lost Mode. Are there any new settings or changes to the existing lost mode settings in the newer IOS versions?

Henning: There are Lost and Found boxes everywhere. That's exact what I'm suggesting here by turning it into someone at the location where you found it. But there are at places like restaurants, schools, office buildings, etc. I've never heard of one at a "town hall." The vast majority of people in the US live in cities (more then 50,000 people) and very few still read newspapers.

Rick: No, it is straightforward. Having Find My iPhone ON is mostly what you need to do.

Fred

I was at the airport recently. Someone lost their phone at the gate check and it seemed they were calling it over and over. The agent wasnt allowed to answer the phone. I thought that was interesting,

What To Do And What Not To Do If You Find a Lost iPhone

Comments: 8 Responses to “What To Do And What Not To Do If You Find a Lost iPhone”

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