Think of it as OnStar tracking, but for your iPhone. Setting up this service didn’t used to be so simple. In a prior life, this service required a MobileMe account, a paid service that only the hardest of hardcore Apple loyalists were apt to spring for. Sensibly, Apple figured it prudent to bring this highly valuable service to all iPhone owners, completely free of charge. Enabling the service is as simple as accepting the opt-in notification for locationbased services upon iOS install, choosing to turn Find My iPhone on, and creating an iCloud account. If you skipped this process while rushing through the startup screens in iOS, simply visit Settings U+2190.svg iCloud U+21AC.svg Find My iPhone, and flip the toggle to On. I can’t emphasize this enough: please, take five seconds and enable this feature. It’s never been easier to proactively protect your investment in anything. Once active, it’s downright staggering what you can do should your iPhone become lost or stolen. For starters, you can sign into www.icloud.com on any web browser in order to see precisely where it’s at based on its GPS coordinates. If you’re near a pal with an iOS device of their own, there’s a Find My iPhone app that allows you to use their device to locate and interact with your lost device. And when I say, “interact,” I mean interact. You can force a pop-up message onto the screen of your misplaced device, encouraging anyone who finds it to drop it off at a given location or phone you at whatever number you please. The message you write is completely customizable. Moreover, you can force the alert to make an audible sound—even if you had the Mute function on when you lost it! If you’re concerned about ill-willed thieves prying into your personal information, you can remotely set a lock-screen password requirement, and if you know that it has somehow fallen into the wrong hands, you can remotely delete all of its contents (see Figure 1-5), but you won’t be able to track it if you do. Clearly, this is a last resort recommendation. If (and when) you do retrieve it, a simple restore from iCloud will bring it back to the state you left it in. Did I mention all of this was free?
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