I found a lost or stolen iPhone

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I found a lost or stolen iPhone

Hi, so while taking a walk, I came across an iPhone that looked to be brand new. I’ve found iPhones before and have always been able to contact the owner and return them. This one, however, was factory reset but still connected to the owner’s Apple ID. Should I just turn it into the police? Or can Apple contact the owners through the serial number (or something)? I’m thinking of turning it in to the police, but want to see if there’s a more direct solution. Thanks in advance!

iPhone 8 Plus

Posted on Aug 31, 2022 04:15 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 31, 2022 04:38 PM in response to iPadDust

Note that Apple takes no active role of any kind with regard to people’s lost or stolen personal property. They don’t even have any mechanism you can report a lost or stolen device to them.

Apple provides Find My and its tools, but the company itself remains deaf, dumb and blind to user’s use of that system. Find My is an autonomous system that is under the control of users to turn on or off and make use of.

As long as the user took advantage of automatic iCloud backups, or made regular iTunes or Finder backups, they should never loose any data.

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