About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone (opens in new tab)

Anything that requires turning off the phone will need a passcode once it powers on. This includes battery replacement, screen, microphone, camera, etc. Only for camera repairs is it feasible to test fully without entering a passcode. Of course you could leave the testing until you pick it up and pay but then if something is faulty you’ll have to come back later and wait longer when they might have been able to repair beforehand if they’d known.

It’s a risk. But it also takes a few hours to restore from backup and there’s a bunch of things that (sensibly) don’t restore and require manual setup.

I know Apple will never ask for your passcode but in the case of a repair shop that promises 15 minute service it’s kinda necessary unless you want it to take far longer and annoy them.

Ultimately with it locked down with screentime the only personal data I had an issue with was iCloud Keychain. Honestly I don’t know why Apple lets children access the full settings anyway. It would be trivial to add a screen time restriction for all features of settings except the screentime pane.

I wiped mine, but then a couple of hours before my appointment for a battery replacement they called and said due to heavy snow the techs could not get, and gave me a new appointment a couple of days later.

I didn't want to fully restore the phone for just a couple of days, so just set it up with a temporary passcode and signed in to an Apple ID I normally do not use [1], so that I could use it for that couple of days without things asking me to sign in.

After the battery replacement I then wiped it and restored from a backup under my normal Apple ID.

This mostly worked, except it messed up my Longest Move Streak with my Apple Watch. I'm not sure if this was just due to the wiping the phone part, or the having the phone on a different Apple ID than the watch for a couple days, or something else.

What the Fitness app tells me about the streak now is just weird.

The streak started on 2019-05-07 and I've not missed a day since then. The battery replacement was on 2022-12-21.

When I checked the streak in Fitness on 2023-02-04 it told me that:

  My longest streak was 39 days ending 2023-02-03
  My current streak was 1368 days

Note that it is reporting a longest streak that is entirely within what it is reporting is my current streak.

17 days later, 2023-02-21, it was reporting:

  My longest streak was 41 days ending on 2023-02-20
  My current streak was 1385 days

Note that when it thinks that the longest streak started was sometime during the previous longest streak, so that makes no sense.

A few months later, 2023-09-23, it was:

  My longest streak was 37 days ending on 2023-09-23
  My current streak was 1600 days

I hadn't checked between that last and now. Checking now, on 2024-01-22, I get:

  My longest streak was 1710 days ending on 2024-01-11
  My current streak is 1720 days

That's better in that now it thinks the longest streak and current streak started at the same time, which is correct. But it still has the longest streak in the interior of the current streak which should not be possible.

[1] I've got two Apple IDs because originally you couldn't use the same account for iTunes and their cloud service, and so everyone who wanted to use both had to have two accounts. Later they made it so one account could use both.

Oh how very wrong you are. This feature came in response to WSJ reporting about iPhone thieves, targeting affluent iPhone users so they could steal their iPhones and rapidly lock the owner out. All while accessing their bank accounts, credit cards etc.

Yeah I saw that article too. It closes that one hole the wsj reported on but pretending there aren’t other credible threats is silly. a bad actor at work could observe the password and then steal the phone at a later date, and take it to the bathroom for instance. That’s just what I’ve come up with from there to of my head.

Very cool, thanks. I notice it doesn’t mention anything about changing bank passwords or the like. Might that be necessary, depending on how long it’s been out of your control? That is, if someone swipes your phone and was able to peak at your password (as a recent WSJ series focused on), you would probably need to take more dramatic steps if you didn’t realize it was gone immediately. Should I be making a list of the apps on my phone that have sensitive information and can be accessed without FaceID?

I wish it were possible to designate an app to require FaceID or both my device password and my Apple ID password (or some other second authentication). Does this new updates fix this issue entirely? I feel like not because until I mark the phone stolen it doesn’t know to lock the holder of the phone out of my apps using just my device password.

> She offered to leave the phone in a pharmacy across town! I don't know how that would've helped.

Well for one, the pharmacy isn't moving.

> She offered to leave the phone in a pharmacy across town! I don't know how that would've helped.

If I had been the one to find your phone, I probably would have told you to suggest some other drop off place I can take it to that isn't too far out of my way, and if you could not or would not I would have probably taken it to a police station.

I would not leave it in the Waymo, even if that is what you wanted, because I have no guarantee that some other Waymo passenger after me will find it and steal it before you can get it back from Waymo. That could leave me as the last person known to have been in possession of the phone. I have no interest in becoming a suspect in the theft of your phone.

Yes, as long as you know your phone was taken, and you immediately use someone else's phone to mark your as lost (or wipe it), you can probably beat them to it. But if your phone was stolen while you were at a movie theater, for example, you might not notice until it was too late. At least there's a 1 hour delay + biometric requirement for certain changes.

They probably stripped the phone down for parts. But there is another theft case where they hold a knife/gun to you and tell you to hand over the password/wipe the phone. Which this update solves.

The other issue could probably be resolved with more aggressive part ID checking. iPhones should just refuse to function if they have a part from a stolen phone.

This feature is not really about protecting your device from being stolen. It's about protecting your iCloud account and everything on your device from being compromised when somebody has stolen your device and also has your phone's passcode.

It's an attempt to resolve the fairly widespread iPhone / iCloud social engineering takeover attacks that were documented in great detail by Joanna Stern last year:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-iphone-security-theft-pas...

https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-techn...

But it kind of does in a statistical measure.

If you think in the systems of how criminals work, they tend to spend more time stealing things they think will pay off. Taking something that will cost them time and not gain them money will over time bias thieves to not taking iphones.

For example it may prevent this

a) iphone is left on a table in the open.

but would not prevent

b) iphone is in a bag, bag gets stolen.

This would discourage thieves from targeting iPhones long term so there is a definite network benefit.

You can't really prevent "I stole your phone just to cause chaos". What Apple did with Find My was to remove the financial incentive to steal phones. What Apple does with this is protecting your iCloud account from someone who knows your passcode. (I would imagine that most people in relationships know their partner's passcode. Sometimes relationships sour.)

What prevents "I stole your phone just to cause chaos" is the risk/reward profile. Even though your phone is useless to someone that stole it, it's still theft, and you'll still have to face consequences if caught. If the incentive is "I'll be able to buy $1200 worth of shit", then people are probably going to take their chances with getting caught. If it's "I'll get nothing except the satisfaction of smashing someone else's electronics", then most people won't take their chances.

With the whole "knowing your passcode doesn't help" situation, it makes the long tail crimes even more difficult. "Tell me your passcode or I'll shoot you" no longer works, for example. It makes the crime significantly more difficult to commit, and requires committing crimes that carry significantly longer sentences. (Armed robbery turns into kidnapping. You could be looking at the rest of your life in prison for $300 in someone's checking account. Not worth it to most people.)

At the end of the day, there is only so much you can do. The rest is your insurance company's problem. The fewer viable attacks there are against you, and the less often they happen, the less your premiums are. (I actually don't know if there is insurance for this. I should check.)

The point of it is to protect your data, not the phone itself.

Thieves have been known to steal iPhones not just for the value of the parts but to compromise your entire digital existence. Most online banking transfers only require a 2nd factor from your phone (your saved passwords are already on there).

Why would a criminal steal your phone if they knew they couldn't sell it?

> At the end of the day, you still don't have the phone whether the thief profits from it or not.

I care a lot about some low life scumbag not profiting from it. Anything that discourages theft is great.

And if it takes more then an hour to get to a computer I can use? What if I’m wait to report it to the police? Seems like it should be a day.