Can I Recover a Lost IPhone If I Only Have an IMEI Number?
Losing your phone is never fun, but it can be worse. While Android and iPhone have a variety of protections you can use to lock or otherwise locate your device when you’ve lost it, or when someone hit it, it’ll do you little good if you can’t even log in. your online account for activation. their.
I know the setup seems a little odd, but I can see for sure that this is a problem for forgetful phone owners – perhaps even seniors who don’t use their phones too much or have never had to reuse them for whatever reason. authenticate to their accounts after their first setup.
Regardless of how these situations happen, they happen. Take the Lifehacker Dulaj reader, for example:
“I lost my iPhone 6s Plus. If you can help me, I would appreciate it. I forgot my iCloud username and password. But I have an IMEI number. Can you help me block it permanently? You are welcome!”
I think the best advice I can give you is that it shouldn’t be very difficult to regain access to your iCloud account. Your “username” is either your email address or phone number , and is most likely your primary email address if you have not used the services in the past few years. I would try using Apple’s ” Recover My Apple ID ” tool to find my Apple ID, and then you can enter it here to start the password reset process.
It won’t take you long to enter any old email addresses that you can still access in Apple’s tool. You can also search for emails from Apple, such as receipts for app purchases, to confirm that a specific email account is associated with your Apple ID.
If that doesn’t work, or you don’t want to, then you’re out of luck. Apple can’t do anything about the IMEI number – essentially the serial number of the device. In other words, there is nothing you can do with the IMEI number, which will magically unlock some version of the Find Me card for your lost phone.
What you can do with this number is call the local police and report your phone is stolen if you suspect it happened and you didn’t just lose your phone in your house or car. Similarly, you can call your mobile operator to report a stolen phone and giving them the IMEI will allow them to blacklist it.
While this won’t help you get your device back if it was actually stolen, it will at least make it impossible for anyone else to use it – at least not cellular functionality. (Hopefully your iPhone 6S Plus used Activation Lock too.)
This is also a great time to remind you and everyone else that you really should check the IMEI of your device against the big blacklists before buying it. While online tools like the one I just linked can be helpful, the best option is to call your carrier directly and make sure the IMEI of your future device is not blacklisted . I would even go a step further and agree to meet with the seller in only one of your carrier’s physical stores – this will not only increase the security of your transaction, but you can also ensure that the phone is working flawlessly before you put away cash. …