Best methods of remote wipe on the iPhone?

jkhonea · Mar 28, 2012

Curious what the general consensus is for the best app or method for doing a remote wipe on the iPhone. Never really looked into it, but with seeing a couple of thefts of friends' phones recently, figured this might be good to know.

EllisByron · Mar 28, 2012

ICloud, also i think 'Find my iphone' has and option for that aswell

EWyatt · Mar 28, 2012

Interesting notion. Would this remote "wipeout" somehow return the iPhone to a default, new-device state or just remove certain items such as Contacts. Let us know if you come across anything like this, other than the iCloud thing. Many of us still live in the pre-iOS 5 world, for good reasons.

zig9449 · Mar 28, 2012

Yes...Find My iPhone allows you to wipe the device. I have no idea exactly what state it leaves the wiped device in. Have never tried it...but I'm sure it's close to the "Erase All Settings and Content" located in Settings> General> Reset.

So if this is true than all it would do to a jailbroken device is put it in a boot loop.

So I suppose if your phone is missing, and your thinking about wiping everything out....don't do it if the phone was jailbroken.lol.

choPppps · Mar 30, 2012

Set a password to unlock the device. 10x's wrong, wiped.

zig9449 · Mar 30, 2012

choPppps said:
Set a password to unlock the device. 10x's wrong, wiped.

Unless it a jailbroken device.....then it'll just be stuck in a boot loop.

jkhonea · Mar 30, 2012

Thanks for the input on these. Didn't think about the jailbreak aspect, but that's good food for thought. Course, if someone has nabbed my phone, I have no problem leaving them with boot loops.

zig9449 · Mar 30, 2012

jkhonea said:
Thanks for the input on these. Didn't think about the jailbreak aspect, but that's good food for thought. Course, if someone has nabbed my phone, I have no problem leaving them with boot loops.

Yeah...makes sense....kind of...but then ya can't track it.lol. Of coarse you would be able to after they restored it.

jkhonea · Mar 30, 2012

Very true on the tracking.

pc747 · Mar 31, 2012

Thanks guys.

chunky · Apr 1, 2012

You have 3 options with findmyiphone.

Send a message and play an alarm.
Remote lock.
Remote wipe.

If the finder of the phone is savvy enough they can affect the remote wipe by turning it off or removing the sim as the remote wipe is not instant.

hence why a remote lock is the first thing to do.

Contacting the police and then the network to instigate an imei lock should render the iPhone to an expensive paperweight as most finders/thief's do not have the appropriate software to unblock the imei