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So I'll bite... I'm curious as to why it is so important to get this specific iPad back. Is there anything specific about it that you can't get a new iPad and just restore the information from a local or iCloud backup? Or is it because of the principle of getting back what was taken from you? Or you can't afford a new one? Or this iPad actually belongs to someone else...?

Don't get me wrong, I've lost an iPad before myself - I never got it back, despite being a cellular iPad, and had to change all my passwords (this was before iCloud and Touch ID), but apart from the initial "grief", I never needed that specific iPad back - this is what I love about iOS - one restore and everything is back to normal.

Not only does it have significant value to me because it was a graduation gift from nearly 10 different people, but it had important school documents on it, as a student and as a teacher... student teacher. And its just plain wrong to steal!
 
One thing to look out for that I've heard of recently: any fishy text messages sent to you that say the iPad has been found, please sign in here to see location. It's a scam to get your account and password, and then suddenly the device is gone from iCloud. So, be wary of that. Otherwise, seems like you've done what you can, unless I missed the part where you gave the serial to the police.
 
The biggest problem I have with issues like this is the owner never wants to take responsibility for their part in the mater. The iPad was negligently left in a public location for two hours for anyone to do with as they please. In todays society it is hard to expect anything other than someone to take it. Yea it sucks but good Samaritans are few and far in between. Ultimately if the iPad would have been properly cared for this would not have happened.

I work in IT and we had a user say "My laptop was stolen, I left it in a cab." Those are two entirely different things and it could not have happened without the gross negligence of the user.

Another user had her iPhone stolen when she was on a business trip by herself and left it on the table while she went to the bathroom. Again the iPhone would not have been able to be stolen without the user's negligence and lack of situational awareness.

Hopefully a lesson was learned from this and it won't happen again.
 
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Not only does it have significant value to me because it was a graduation gift from nearly 10 different people, but it had important school documents on it, as a student and as a teacher... student teacher. And its just plain wrong to steal!

Yes... I suspected it had sentimental value. Apart from that, did you at least make a recent iTunes or iCloud backup? That way your data is not permanently lost.

It's unfortunate that you've lost your iPad, but I'd recommend moving forward rather than working on the assumption that you'll get it back eventually.
 
The biggest problem I have with issues like this is the owner never wants to take responsibility for their part in the mater. The iPad was negligently left in a public location for two hours for anyone to do with as they please. In todays society it is hard to expect anything other than someone to take it. Yea it sucks but good Samaritans are few and far in between. Ultimately if the iPad would have been properly cared for this would not have happened.

I work in IT and we had a user say "My laptop was stolen, I left it in a cab." Those are two entirely different things and it could not have happened without the gross negligence of the user.

Another user had her iPhone stolen when she was on a business trip by herself and left it on the table while she went to the bathroom. Again the iPhone would not have been able to be stolen without the user's negligence and lack of situational awareness.

Hopefully a lesson was learned from this and it won't happen again.
If you're going to attach criminal legal standards you need to learn the difference between a simple lapse, negligence, and gross negligence.
 
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If you're going to attach criminal legal standards you need to learn the difference between a simple lapse, negligence, and gross negligence.
I didn't realize that those were legal standards. Looks like I got some reading to do. Thanks for pointing it out so that others don't think I was using legal standards.
 
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I hate to admit this but I've lost my first ipad while enroute from pt A to B on an airline, because I was in seat 1A and there was no convenient overhead space I placed a small ipad handled bag under my seat. Slept most of the flight and when deboarding, I had completely forgotten about it and was the last one to walk off the plane. As soon as I got to our friends house I realized what I had done, called the airport, talked to the airline and airport lost and found on Monday. Today, no ipad.

Because of how I deboarded, last one off, I'm almost positive it was stolen by aircraft groomers. Otherwise it would be easily spotted and turned in to the gate agent. Sigh. Ironically I had just talked to my wife about how old my ipad was getting and that it would probably conk out any day. How prophetic. I'm concerned mostly about a file I had on my ipad with both account numbers and passwords, however this was an encrypted .pdf file with a name that would not lead anyone to believe that it contained the keys to my kingdom, buried away in a sub folder.

Here's the question, I already put my ipad into 'lost mode'. I feel almost certain it's not going to turn up and I'm debating setting it to erase itself through the 'find my ipad app'. The thing is, if I don't think I'm going to get it back, I should so this. If I do that, it's no longer traceable, but I've come to realize that tracing it is just not that much help is it?

Let's say the person who has it, can first get past the ipad login and gets online. Ok so "find my ipad" gives me an alert. What now? I shows it's physical location on a street somewhere, maybe here were I'm visiting or Chicago for all I know. I'm not aware of any mechanism that will cause a law enforcement agency to go get my ipad. :( Therefore the function seems mostly worthless. And because I don't think I'm going to get this item back, don't believe tracking it will be any help, and have decided to set it to erase itself upon connection to the internet. It's conceivable that if anyone manages to get into it, they might try to use it without an internet connection though.

Any thoughts on the security of an encrypted pdf? That concerns me most, but I'm hoping that the data is safe without the erase happening. Maybe I should go and change out all of my passwords to be on the safe side. :(

In the mean time, this iPad was backed up, and I'm shopping around for a new iPad. I'm looking at upcoming Black Friday deals, but also looking at refurbished iPad Air 2s.
 
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I hate to admit this but I've lost my first ipad while enroute from pt A to B on an airline, because I was in seat 1A and there was no convenient overhead space I placed a small ipad handled bag under my seat. Slept most of the flight and when deboarding, I had completely forgotten about it and was the last one to walk off the plane. As soon as I got to our friends house I realized what I had done, called the airport, talked to the airline and airport lost and found on Monday. Today, no ipad.

Because of how I deboarded, last one off, I'm almost positive it was stolen by aircraft groomers. Otherwise it would be easily spotted and turned in to the gate agent. Sigh. Ironically I had just talked to my wife about how old my ipad was getting and that it would probably conk out any day. How prophetic. I'm concerned mostly about a file I had on my ipad with both account numbers and passwords, however this was an encrypted .pdf file with a name that would not lead anyone to believe that it contained the keys to my kingdom, buried away in a sub folder.

Here's the question, I already put my ipad into 'lost mode'. I feel almost certain it's not going to turn up and I'm debating setting it to erase itself through the 'find my ipad app'. The thing is, if I don't think I'm going to get it back, I should so this. If I do that, it's no longer traceable, but I've come to realize that tracing it is just not that much help is it?

Let's say the person who has it, can first get past the ipad login and gets online. Ok so "find my ipad" gives me an alert. What now? I shows it's physical location on a street somewhere, maybe here were I'm visiting or Chicago for all I know. I'm not aware of any mechanism that will cause a law enforcement agency to go get my ipad. :( Therefore the function seems mostly worthless. And because I don't think I'm going to get this item back, don't believe tracking it will be any help, and have decided to set it to erase itself upon connection to the internet. It's conceivable that if anyone manages to get into it, they might try to use it without an internet connection though.

Any thoughts on the security of an encrypted pdf? That concerns me most, but I'm hoping that the data is safe without the erase happening. Maybe I should go and change out all of my passwords to be on the safe side. :(

In the mean time, this iPad was backed up, and I'm shopping around for a new iPad. I'm looking at upcoming Black Friday deals, but also looking at refurbished iPad Air 2s.


I also left my iPad on a plane a week ago. SWA said the "tried diligently" to find it, but no luck.

I guess I need to determine how to do the lost mode and otherwise lock it out.
 
I also left my iPad on a plane a week ago. SWA said the "tried diligently" to find it, but no luck.

I guess I need to determine how to do the lost mode and otherwise lock it out.

Sign into iCloud (https://www.icloud.com) on another computer (yes obvious ;)), select the Find My iPhone app (it does all of your ios devices), see it if shows a location, if it does not, select either lost mode or erase mode. Lost mode puts a message on your ipad with the phone number you enter. I believe Erase mode also includes a message such as your phone, but it won't be trackable because as soon as someone goes online with it, it will erase. This is after they figure out your pass code to get into it in the first place.

I left mine in Lost Mode for a few days and seeing the writing on the wall, put it on erase. To date no one has gone online with it. An obvious concern is that if there is sensitive account info on and that they might get in, but I don't think the average person has that skill. Other possibilities might be to reset it and use it for yourself, but I don't know how well that works with a stolen iPad. The worst possibility would be to sell it to an experienced hacker, who can get through two passwords, spot and have interest in a locked file (which one of the passwords covers).

Which prompts me to throw out a general question to the audience. ;) If you feel the need to carry sensitive account info on your portable devices, what is the best way to protect that data for when it's lost or stolen?

I did have sensitive info on my iPad, like bank account numbers, but they were located in an encrypted PDF file, with an innocuous name, buried in a sub folder. I also use 1 Password. I kept all sorts of info in that pdf, but in light of convincing myself, I can actually lose my iPad, I may just exclusively rely on 1Password for this device for all the online things I might want to access while traveling. Never mind that my MBP has the same files on it and it can be lost too. In the mean time, I have started to change all of my passwords on all the susceptible accounts.
 
I've looked into this a bit and officially Apple has no interest in keeping a database of stolen serial numbers. They tell you to tell the police in this link: Reporting a Lost or Stolen Apple Product.

However this is a web site that offers to compile lost and stolen ios device serial numbers. You'd think that a list of stolen device serial numbers would be important to someone. Maybe not. Has anyone heard of this? Just curious. I've kissed my ipad goodbye. I may notify the police in the city where it was stolen. o_O
 
whatever you do , do not remove it from your iCloud account. you can erase it, and put message with a name and number, but that would stop you from locating it. your only hope is like you said, put it in lost mode and hope it connects to a known wifi network , that has connected to before! don't be like the FBI ! don't change your iCloud password!!!! LOL

this is why i buy cellular iPads. that free 200 mb T-mobile plan might of got your ipad back

airplane mode kills it, just the same way as it does for iPhones. that $10 a month saved over 2 years can buy you a half of a new iPad instead.
 
I lost Air 2 twice and they were important to me until a month later I had to accept that both will never be found I moved on I used my hard earned money from my work and picked one from eBay. I learned my lesson not to leave on the bus twice! :(
 
I left mine in Lost Mode for a few days and seeing the writing on the wall, put it on erase.
Thieves hold on to it until you put it in erase mode. Then they restore and sell it. Never erase an iPad, keep it locked with a pin code, forever.

Let me say this again: Erase mode removes your locks and opens the device up for anyone else to claim. It is what you do when you sell it to someone else. Keep it in locked mode forever, with an email contact for recovery in the lock message.
 
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I know it does not matter now but I don't see why you'd carry it at the grocery store and even more i would never set anything down at the store including my phone. Let it be a learning experience if nothing else.
 
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Thieves hold on to it until you put it in erase mode. Then they restore and sell it. Never erase an iPad, keep it locked with a pin code, forever.

Let me say this again: Erase mode removes your locks and opens the device up for anyone else to claim. It is what you do when you sell it to someone else. Keep it in locked mode forever, with an email contact for recovery in the lock message.

I'm not disputing what you are saying, but nothing I've found online says that the erase mode removes the pass code. Maybe they should say that, if this is what happens. Even more frustrating none of the articles I've found online recommends one over the other. I've come to realize that the Find Your iPhone app is really only helpful for lost IOS devices, not stolen ones.

My impression is the single thing that might be effective is a mechanism sponsored by Apple that lists iOS devices as stolen based on their serial number. Whenever a stolen iOS device is connected to iTunes or the App Store, it would then be shut down whether it was reformatted or not.

Of interest, it's been over a week now and the erase code has not been triggered. I found out that I can put it back into lost mode and did that. However, if someone is knowlegible, they could start it up with no network for it to connect to and play with breaking into it as long as they want. The question is wether it's set as lost or to erase, when hooked up to a computer, can a reset be easily triggered? From my own experience with my iOS device hooked to iTunes on my mac, iTunes won't let me do anything to the iPad until it is unlocked with the pass code.
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I lost Air 2 twice and they were important to me until a month later I had to accept that both will never be found I moved on I used my hard earned money from my work and picked one from eBay. I learned my lesson not to leave on the bus twice! :(

The key is not to set it down, on an airplane especially in the seat back. Out of sight out of mind. This happened to me when I put it under my seat, no seat in front of me, cause the flight attendant made me. :oops: This was an old iPad, my primary concern is an encrypted password file on it. Hopefully, I learned a relatively inexpensive lesson.
 
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This is from Apple's official website.
  1. Erase your device. To prevent anyone else from accessing the data on your missing device, you can erase it remotely. When you erase your device, all of your information (including credit or debit cards for Apple Pay) will be deleted from the device, and you won't be able to find it using Find My iPhone. After you erase a device, you can't track it. If you remove the device from your account after you erase it, Activation Lock will be turned off. This allows another person to activate and use your device.
Once it's erased, it's gone and may easily become somebody else's device.
 
About year and a half ago, I got off a Southwest flight, and as I was heading up the ramp, one of the flight attendants came running up to a gentleman in a nice suit with a tablet in hand (not sure if it was an iPad.) She said h (yes, I looked to see.) All I hear was the words "important" and "saved me."

Sometimes, you get lucky. But not often.
 
My story ended happily. I just received my iPadAir 2 back via Fedex. Now I have the Air 2 and the replacement Pro 9.7!

As an interesting side note, the iPad was Fedex from Scottsboro, AL. Home of this place.
https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/ I wonder if they get everything left behind on SouthWest flights and gets to keep and sell anything not claimed in 30 days.

Probably was good I did not erase it. When it got back to me I had to enter the 4 digit code to get in. And when I got in, there was a "lost ipad" message on the screen.
 
My story ended happily. I just received my iPadAir 2 back via Fedex. Now I have the Air 2 and the replacement Pro 9.7!

As an interesting side note, the iPad was Fedex from Scottsboro, AL. Home of this place.
https://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/ I wonder if they get everything left behind on SouthWest flights and gets to keep and sell anything not claimed in 30 days.

Probably was good I did not erase it. When it got back to me I had to enter the 4 digit code to get in. And when I got in, there was a "lost ipad" message on the screen.

I live near there, and it's a pretty cool store. Not sure if they get all unclaimed baggage from SW, or other airlines as well, but it's a huge store with lots of stuff and people. :D
 
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About year and a half ago, I got off a Southwest flight, and as I was heading up the ramp, one of the flight attendants came running up to a gentleman in a nice suit with a tablet in hand (not sure if it was an iPad.) She said h (yes, I looked to see.) All I hear was the words "important" and "saved me."

Sometimes, you get lucky. But not often.

This must be one of those sometimes. A curious thing happened this morning 9 days after leaving my iPad on a Delta Connection flight, Delta Lost and Found called me saying they had my iPad! :D :D Now despite filling out a lost item report on the web site the day it was lost, only 9 days later. ;)

Now I'll have to pay for them to ship it to me, but that's ok. Plus my faith is renewed in airline personnel, because the manner in which I left the plane, last one off, it had to have been found by groomers or aircrew.

What this has done, has made me worry about vulnerabilty of my data, although it was all encrypted, everything was in there, it represented the keys to my castle and I'm making significant changes to my methods. For one thing I'll be putting more reliance on 1 Password for online logins. It can also be used for all sorts of things, passwords, drivers license info, anything sensitive. I'm also considering what sensitive account info do I really need to have on me when traveling, putting that sensitive data on a stick, but I still have to think about the best place to keep the stick when traveling, in my suitcase or on my person. Thoughts on this in general?
 
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This must be one of those sometimes. A curious thing happened this morning 9 days after leaving my iPad on a Delta Connection flight, Delta Lost and Found called me saying they had my iPad! :D :D Now despite filling out a lost item report on the web site the day it was lost, only 9 days later. ;)

Now I'll have to pay for them to ship it to me, but that's ok. Plus my faith is renewed in airline personnel, because the manner in which I left the plane, last one off, it had to have been found by groomers or aircrew.

What this has done, has made me worry about vulnerabilty of my data, although it was all encrypted, everything was in there, it represented the keys to my castle and I'm making significant changes to my methods. For one thing I'll be putting more reliance on 1 Password for online logins. It can also be used for all sorts of things, passwords, drivers license info, anything sensitive. I'm also considering what sensitive account info do I really need to have on me when traveling, putting that sensitive data on a stick, but I still have to think about the best place to keep the stick when traveling, in my suitcase or on my person. Thoughts on this in general?

Your timeline for hearing something is just about the same I experienced. I am curious to see if they are shipping your device from Scottsboro, AL also, implying it is some central hub for lost items. I paid $25 for fedex saver shipping to me.

Regarding the security of the data, I worried about that also. But when I got the device it was still locked and my code unlocked it. So I am reasonably sure that no one got in. Also, all of the apps like the weather channel initially displayed data from the day I left the unit on board.

Interestingly because of this event, I actually started using a password manager, Dashlane. I figure if I every do lose something again, it will be easy to change the master password on the password manager. Then I can use the password manager to update and remember the new passwords for all of my various accounts.
 
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