“Oh no! My iPhone’s lost. What now?”: Lessons Learned
For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about Fraiser Speirs’ blog post from nearly a year ago.
Last week, while at work, I got a phone call from my son’s school. As a dad, and because the school doesn’t call me very often, I take these as high priority calls. So I picked it up. It was my wife on the other side of the line. That day, while taking my son to school, she took a Uber and left her iPhone in the car. Was it lost forever?
Let the adventure begin
It was now my job to investigate and find the phone.
I guess that on the positive side, we knew where the iPhone was. Easy, right? Call the driver and ask him to meet up, right?
No.
I called my wife’s number, but no one picked up. I called a second time and again the same result.
My next thought was to log into my wife’s Uber account to see who the driver was and call him on his phone number. It didn’t work. As a security-conscientious person, I convinced my wife to set up a 2-factor authentication (2FA) when she opened her account, and now I couldn’t get access to the code on the phone.
Uber has a “Lost & Found” webpage stating “lost your phone, type in someone’s else phone number”. The problem is that the only button available is to “Login to your account”1. Not very useful.
Lesson #1: Uber’s website and app are very limited regarding security options. Perhaps the real 2-factor authentication is to “share” your account with someone else. This became a feature look for when choosing an app or service going forwards.
No one’s picking up when I call. Is the iPhone off?
My next idea was to login to my wife’s iCloud account2 to track down her iPhone. I couldn’t access her account with the reason being, again, the 2-factor authentication pop up asking me for a code that had been sent by text message. I was able to login to the “Find My Phone” page though and confirm that the device was still switched on. That’s good news! It also means it’s yet too soon to click on the “Erase The Phone” or “Report As Lost” buttons.
Lesson #2: Mea culpa, I should’ve set up a trusted phone on her account, which I did now.
If you haven’t done so, do it. It only takes 3 simple steps to follow:
- Go to the iPhone -> Settings -> Your name on the top of the page -> Password and security
- Enter your phone’s pin or password
- Add a trusted phone and save
This can also be done, in the Apple’s ID webpage3
If there’s one thing in this process that helped me keeping cool was the idea that the phone might have been lost, but the data wasn’t. iCloud to the rescue. The iCloud backup option was “on”, so the data was safe, and that was a relief.
Lesson #3: Turn on iCloud backups pays off.
Be prepared before it happens
It happened to my wife, but it could have been me. It could’ve been anyone, really. All of us are at risk of losing our phones, but how many know what to do when it happens?
Lesson #4: A checklist is a good idea and it’ll make you feel calmer and in control.
Other lessons learned
The 2-factor authentication is a good security measure. However, in this case, it was also the blocker mainly because the codes were to be delivered by text message. I’ll be auditing my household apps that require 2FA and move as many as possible to Auth App, my 2FA app of choice. Should this happen again, I’m not relying entirely on text messages to access vital information.
If the phone is your only device, consider having a family member device as a backup. It’ll be a massive coincidence for both devices to get lost at the same time.
Needless to say that proper password management should also be installed on any device. 1Password and Last Password are great options which also offer authentication tools. My wife’s been a bit resistant to Password management, but this was the perfect trigger for her to jump in.
I realised that visiting websites under stress makes it much more difficult to find the info required. Would you know where to go should you need assistance? Or what number to call? Uber’s site proved to be very difficult to navigate for this type of information. But it’s not the only one. Why not search for email addresses and phone numbers of your most used apps well in advance and keep them in a list, or in your password manager? While on the website, check if they offer web chat and take note as well. It can be helpful.
Lastly, keep all this in mind every time you open a new account or install a new app. It’s so much quicker to do it at this time for one app or service, rather than later for many.
Thanks Mr Driver
Just when I was about to give up, I tried to call my wife’s phone again. This time I got lucky and the Uber driver picked up (he hadn’t done it before because he was finishing a job). He was kind enough to bring the phone back to her on his break.
This time the story had a happy end. But next time might be different.
Maybe the biggest of all lessons is not what you know or the tools that you have available, but how much ready you are for a disaster recovery reaction.
Digitally Speaking Lab 