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.