John Carter left his iPhone on a plane! There's a happy ending! There's something for us to learn from this!
"Suppose your iPhone gets lost (you left it on the plane). Frantically, you go online to iCloud.com and configure the iPhone to be erased if anyone attempts to use the iPhone. This seems to be the best way to protect your information, right? Wrong! The iPhone will only be erased when someone attempts to connect to the Internet — or so the story goes. So, if they never access the Internet, they can open Contacts and browse any file on the iPhone at will.

"So maybe the next choice is to lock the iPhone. But this choice also only comes into effect when the person attempts to access the Internet. So even this isn't the best way to protect your iPhone.

"What's left? Well, you should have set the iPhone to require a passcode as soon as the iPhone is turned on.

"In my case, I did recently leave my iPhone on the plane. It was found and returned. What made it possible to be returned to me was that I did NOT have a passcode set to lock my phone, and the baggage claim person opened the phone and did something to discover that I was the owner of the phone and sent me an email message."

What a relief, read on! John has more to say, "But, I had already gone online to icloud.com and set the phone to be erased when the Internet was accessed. Fully believing that my iPhone would be erased as soon as I tried to get on the Internet, I was totally surprised that it didn't happen!

"Bottom line is, as my wife says, don't believe what you see. Protecting your information in a lost phone is only going to happen if you have set a passcode to lock the phone. Add a label to your phone on the outside that identifies you as the owner and no one needs to open the phone to find out how to contact you. Better yet, have your contact information engraved on the back side of the phone."