UKC

I’ve left my iPhone XR in Zakinthos airport, Greece. I use a 6 digit PIN.  How secure are they?  I’ve locked the phone via my provider ID. 

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

iPhones are pretty secure. It'll lock up if anyone tries to brute-force your pin.

If the Phone has network connectuvity, and you can access your Apple account in another device or via a web browser , then you may be able to locate it, flag it as lost/stolen, or remote-wipe it.

Some guidance:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/101593

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/23/what-to-do-phone-lost-st...

Good luck!

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iph7cc193cfc/ios

In reply to Graeme G: and Andy:

Thanks. 100% sure I left it in the plastic tray that goes through the X ray machine thing. We’d had a very stressful hour prior to this part, and as I was putting my rucksack on after it had passed through the machine, my son got pulled for drugs testing , so I got distracted and forgot to get my phone. The airport dept dealing with such items say that they haven’t found it, which surprises me.  

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Good luck. I’d be surprised if you get it back. My experience is airport staff don’t give a toss. Best hope is if you register it lost that someone spots this, realises the phone is no use to them as iPhones are generally completely secure and then gets in touch with you.

In reply to Graeme G:

I’m not optimistic. The holiday was great, a big family treat in a swish Airbnb. But the travelling either side was a total disaster:

The taxi to Wigan train station had messed up, and thought we wanted picked up at 10.30 in the evening (we’d agreed 10.30 in the morning). Ended up driving to the station and leaving the car there for 9 nights  

We went to Gatwick so my daughter could hook up with us, but she got I’ll and couldn’t make the fight so we paid for her ticket for later flight…/

When we went to collect the hire car, the car hire company only accepted credit card so I lost all the money I’d paid up front. Luckily another car hire place dealt with debit cards…

We got lost driving to our villa, did a three point turn on a mountain track and momentarily drove on the wrong side of the road, causing a car to swerve out of my way (100% my fault, messed me up for a few days)…We got to the apartment, sorted a few things then had to go back to the airport to collect my daughter…

For a reason we have yet to fathom, almost missed the plane on the way back - when we got to check in, 40 mins before they closed, there were no easyJet signs at our check in desks. We assumed this was because our plane was delayed.  Panic eventually set in and we found out that our check in desks had closed !  They checked our bags in manually, 65 euros each for 3 items  

Then I lost my phone  

Extra cost = £960 plus my phone !!!!!

Edot: £1030 plus phone.  Bugger  

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

That sounds a bit of an ordeal either end. You ought to start a new thread on stories of travelling to and from a holiday !!!

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

OMG, what a saga

At least the middle part would have been nice. Hopefully.

In reply to Bottom Clinger: last week on the way out from Liverpool my day pack was pulled for searching ( can of deodorant- doh ) . The chap lifted it out of the tray leaving my phone in the bottom . As he went to put the tray in the machine to take it back the beginning my 13 yo son grabbed it , smiled at him sweetly as he shouted “phone “ .  As a result of this thread I’m going to write my name , email and work phone number in sharpy on the back of it . As has been said - once it locks it useless and hence worthless  , so maybe a chance . 

In reply to mike123: just removed the case - already  sticker with my name , address and email on the back of the phone . But finding that would require somebody to look . Going to put one on the case z

In reply to mike123:

Set up emergency contacts on your phone.

I recently had a call from a stranger on my husband's phone, he had found it in the street and got my number through emergency contacts. Obviously relies on the finder putting in some effort,  bit so does any system where you are relying on the finder to contact you.

In reply to Jenny C:

I just have my secondary email address on my Lock Screen.

In reply to Fraser:

I have husbands phone number on mine.

Can't work out how to put mine on his screen though.

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

If I understand this correctly (and I am inferring a lot, so please correct me if wrong):
You booked a hire car in advance, online, and paid for it upfront. 
When you went to pick it up, aside from the rental that you'd paid for in advance, they needed to swipe a credit card for a holding deposit. You don't use credit cards, so this was not possible, and you needed to find an alternative car hire company on the spot, that would accept debit cards.
You get no refund from the original car hire company. Your travel insurance can't help. And as it was presumably not paid for by credit card in advance (I am assuming here that you simply don't use credit cards at all), you can't get the bank to do a "charge-back"? 

 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Chargeback is available on debit cards too. There are extra legal obligations on credit card providers (section 75) that give even greater protection, but the options for debit cards aren't as non-existent as people often seem to think. 

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/visa-mastercard-chargeback/

In reply to Luke90:

Thanks. Of course I also don't know the T&C of the booking with the car hire company but it sounds all a bit harsh on the OP. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I really don't 'get' on here why so many people are proud of being credit card free, then the same person is mortality offended when they :unexpectedly' need a credit card for a deposit on hire cars.

Yes if you are bad with money credit cards can get you into a horrible mess, but if you have any remote sense of discipline they can be very useful. Not least for hire cars, or unexpected travel expenses (hospital bills perhaps) where you have to pay upfront and claim back off your insurance. 

In reply to Jenny C:

I was trying to be non-judgemental, non-assuming etc. (*) There could be many reasons that a person is averse to using credit cards. I agree that in cases like this where it literally cost the person money, the approach can backfire. The OP never implied that they were mortally offended by the demand for a credit card; I assume they are a bit used to it. 

* especially in the wake of being the bad guy on a Wordle thread due to not being psychic… 

In reply to Jenny C:

but on the whole I agree . In the early days, mired in student debt etc, I was reluctant and fearful of the world of the credit card. And I messed things up when I first had one as a badly salaried full time worker. I got suckered into a Payment Protection Plan and all that nonsense and through my early thirties was juggling finances; not having a credit card at that time would have been mostly more simple for me. But I always knew they were very helpful on things like car hire. 

In reply to Jenny C:

Credit cards are like cars, phones, social media. Many people get addicted to using them much to the detriment of themselves or others. 

In reply to Jenny C:

My weekend guests live next to the Thames, and have just told me the following story.

My friend was gazing brainlessly into the clear-ish water next to the house one afternoon and he thought “omg that looks like a phone on the bottom”. He fished it out with a rake, and it was an iPhone. He dried it out, charged it up and turned it on. It worked, and the owner had set up the emergency contact number, so he phoned it and the owner's husband answered.

Apparently it was his wife's new phone which he had balanced on the side of the boat to get a photo. His wife said don't let it fall in, and of course it did. He dived in and scrabbled around in the water with no success, so she had to get another phone.

Apparently it had been at the bottom of the river for a year! I was impressed.

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

You know those small little extra barcodes you get when you print out your baggage tags, they are great to put on phones/ passports etc. very easy for airport staff to identify who’s it is if you lose it or forget it at security

In reply to Jenny C:

I don't need a credit card. But I see no good reason why debit and credit cards should not have identical protection. Maybe someone can explain.

In reply to captain paranoia:

I think it was part of the deal when the government let the banks start offering credit cards back in the day. They were seen, quite rightly, as having potential to be quite a predatory option (whilst also obviously offering significant advantages if used wisely), so the deal was "fine, we'll let you do this and no doubt make a killing on interest and other charges, but in return you have to take on responsibility for offering really stringent consumer protection options". Unusually forward-thinking and consumer-friendly. I suspect that if the question had come up these days the banks would whine about how un-affordable the scheme would be and talk the politicians out of it.

In reply to Jenny C:

Because credit cards are generally just a capitalist shite scheme? And with us pretty old farts usually growing up with "mattress banks" plus the young ones growing up with the housing crisis and stupefying student debts, they no longer seem like such a great idea?

Even in some of the most tourisy destinations like the Canary Islands, there's plenty of car hire companies that work with debit without even raising an eye.

And if your only health insurance for some Nepal trip where you might potentially need cash or credit to get medical attention is your credit card, I'd say you have bigger problems than just cash management. Because the places wanting cold cash there aren't likely to accept it either, and you are just fecked up either way. Cash is cash, and any LMIC countries' hospitals won't really accept any credit cards for the very valid fears of their patient later disputing the charges. Cash is the king in such places.

For all my other trips – including to Iran of all the countries – regular travel health insurance worked quite well. And while Iran did require a separate cash deposit for their own health insurance for tourists (unless yours had a stamped official document certifying that it applies in Iran as well, which we lacked), your credit card would be worth exactly its weight in plastic at the customs window.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Yes to all the above. Sometimes, I’m a totally useless get. 

In reply to GarethSL:

Thanks for this, and other people’s tips. 

In reply to GarethSL:

I once, while doing print your own barcode and attach it to yourself because then we can employ fewer actual people, had the audacity to stick one of those little extra barcodes on the outside of my checked bag before handing it over. I wasn’t totally confident the big tag would stay attached, given where it was on the bag.

The wonderful person who was the only human in the drop-off-your-bag process was obviously having a similarly calm and soothing day as I was, and informed me that doing this would mean “the system would not not be able to scan on my bag”. I countered, patiently with: “that’s not how barcodes work”, and she politely ended the conversation with: “You don’t know how it works! I’m trained in… airports.”

At one point in the conversation I thought I wasn’t going to be allowed to travel with this bag, but both me and the bag made it. I’ve been afraid to touch the little extra barcodes ever since.