Locating a stolen Galaxy S5

[mdidonato1]

I have a Samsung Galaxy S5 4G LTE and my service provider is verizon. I misplaced my phone and someone ended up stealing it, so im wondering if it is possible to track it down based somehow. I think the person already did a factory reset on the phone, but does that make a difference trying to locate it? I didnt have any of the lost phone locator apps installed I dont think, but I did have a passcode on it. If the person was to go into the verizon store and try to use it, or set it up for himself, would the people at verizon be able to tell that it was a stolen phone by the serial number on it (if I claimed a stolen phone report)? Do they usually look at those things before they set up a phone for someone that isnt actually theirs? Just trying to figure out / understand how the whole phone tracking thing works and if it would be easy (or not) for this person/thief to just take it over put it in their name and have it for their own use. Any insight to how all that stuff works would be greatly appreciated!

 

[anon(9099462)]

If they try to activated themselves they won't be able to as long as the phone is still under your account. If you get another phone and that phone is removed from your account they might be able to activated. I few months ago a purchased a S6 Edge online and wasn't able to activated because it was still locked under another persons account so the phone was either stolen or given as a gift to the seller and was never removed from the account of the other owner. I don't think they'll be able to track it but they if anything the other person might not be able to activated.

Though personally unless he is as dumb as he seems he wouldn't try to activated for himself, he'll just sell it and when the other person who purchased it tries to activated it'll show up as a stolen phone and won't able to activated and will not be able to contact the person because he got his money and that is all he cared about.

 

[BlurryEyed]

Have you tried the Android Device Manager yet?
https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager

Samsung has their own if you enabled it as well:
https://findmymobile.samsung.com/help/startupDeviceUse.do

 

[BlurryEyed]

I would also contact your carrier so they can block the ESN of the stolen device so it can't be used on their network, but it may not stop them from using it on another network. This is assuming you've failed to locate in Android Device Manager. I wouldn't disable the ESN until you're certain it's gone for good.

 

[le]

Galaxy S 5. it was stolen in spanish airport. unable to recover because sim was destroyed right after theft.

 

[anon(1017475)]

Has anyone on this forum used the Samsung FindMyMobile? If you, or the thief turns location off...ADM is useless. I wonder if the same is true for FindMyMobile.

 

[can3gxw]

FindmyMobile works just fine with location off (I just tested it). I do think, however, that it must also be online and have an active network connection.

It would make sense (almost?) that if both location were off and the SIM was removed, it wouldn't work. How could it? Hmmm....