PAYG getting same phone number if phone stolen 5 February at 9:46AM in Mobiles 2 replies 113 views

Pat38493

Hi I have a couple of questions prompted by recent theft of a friend’s phone 

First, if I am on PAYG SIM card, will I still be able to get a replacement SIM with the same number if my phone is stolen or lost?  I was wondering how the network provider would know that it’s my number if I just bought the SIM in a supermarket or whatever?

Second, with Apple phones there is the system where you need to receive a code on the Apple device itself in order to validate your login.  If your phone is your only device and it’s lost or stolen, how can you get your access back?  I’m guessing you can do it once you get a replacement SIM with the same trusted number?

PHK

As long as you registered the SIM (eg set up an online account) then you’ll have no problem getting a replacement, having the stolen SIM blocked and recovering the credit. 

If you didn’t register then the procedure varies. They’ll probably ask you to confirm some numbers that were called from the phone and the amount of the last top up 

if you go to iCloud.com and log into your Apple account, you can deactivate and remove the stolen phone and set up the authentication to work from your email or another number. 

edit: spelling 

Pat38493

PHK said:

As long as you registered the SIM (eg set up an online account) then you’ll have no problem getting a replacement, having the stolen SIM blocked and recovering the credit. 

If you didn’t register then the procedure varies. They’ll probably ask you to confirm some numbers that were called from the phone and the amount of the last top up 

if you go to iCloud.com and log into your Apple account, you can deactivate and remove the stolen phone and set up the authentication to work from your email or another number. 

edit: spelling 

Thanks - regarding the Apple part, I am not sure you can do that as you cannot log into iCloud.com without either the authentication code from the lost phone, or at the least access to the trusted phone number which might be the phone number that was stolen.  From what we found yesterday the only thing you can do without it is to mark the phone as “lost”.  You cannot even remote erase the phone without the access code from the phone itself!