I found an iPhone 7 how can I activate it?

It was a females phone and she didn't have a passcode on it. II have already took the sim out of it. Should I hook it up to my computer, I have an iTunes account.

If you must keep it, then yes, hook it to your computer and set it up as brand new. The right thing to do though would be to put back in the sim card and search through her contacts and try to get the phone back to its owner. How would you feel losing a £600 phone and someone else finding it, activating it and keeping it for themselves?

Firstly, if you do anything other than take it to the police you are committing a criminal act, "Theft by finding".
The penalties are the same as for any other form of theft.

Secondly, iphones have an activation lock that only the _real_ owner can get past.
Without their username & password, it's a brick.

See if you can identify the owner first, according to what's on the phone, such as emergency contacts. If not, and if impossible to find out whom it belongs to, then you can keep the phone, and activate it by calling your cell phone carrier and giving the serial number.

So what are the consequences of this? How do fancy getting a criminal record over this! It's someone elses property. It's not different to you driving off in someone elses car. You could be up for theft, fraud, or handling stolen goods - do al that you can to get it back to it's owner!

She will have by now reported it lost or stolen, the carrier will blacklist the phone's IMEI or ESN and it will become useless as far as activation on any carrier, using it with iTunes or iCloud under any account but the original owner.

You can't.

You would require the owner's Apple ID & password.

"Found." Heh heh.

You can't. By now, the person who lost the phone has disabled it and is tracking it by GPS at this very moment. If you know, or are able to find the owner, I suggest you do so immediately

I have never found an iPhone really