iPhone Users Should Activate Apple’s Stolen Device Protection Feature

This week, Apple released a new version of iOS with a range of new features, including the new “stolen device protection.” By default, it is deactivated on phones, but iPhone users have been urged to turn it on when they update to iOS 17.3 to safeguard their phones from theft, reports TechCrunch.

An investigation carried out by Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen for The Wall Street Journal led to this new feature being implemented. The investigation shone light on thieves stealing money and gaining access to sensitive data, which is supposed to be stored securely on iPhones and the iCloud linked to the account.

A crucial note to remember is the passcode, which can be used to unlock a phone and adjust certain settings. Even if Face ID or Touch ID is turned on, you can continue with the passcode as a default to unlock a phone and make changes to the settings.

Thieves after iPhones have been exploiting this passcode option by going to bars late at night and talking to strangers to get a hold of their passcodes.

Speaking to Joanna Stern, an iPhone thief said that he would tell his victims that he wanted to add them on Snapchat as a way to get the ball rolling. It’s usually easier to enter your contact details directly on another person’s phone as opposed to saying it out loud, so the thief would say that he can type his username in himself to get a hold of the phone.

When the person hands over their phone, the thief would lock it and claim that the iPhone is locked. He then simply asked for the passcode and kept it memorized.

Once the phone has been stolen, the passcode can be used to unlock the device and change the Apple ID password in the phone settings. By doing this, the “Find My iPhone” feature can be disabled, and the victim can’t clear their device remotely.

A lot of iPhone users also keep their personal passwords in their iCloud Keychain, along with credit card details in Safari’s autofill preferences. Thieves can attempt to open encrypted notes in the Notes app to check if sensitive information has been stored there, such as social security numbers.

Thieves could potentially even utilize Apple Pay directly. Even if they can’t use Face ID, they can use the passcode instead. In addition, having the passcode option allows thieves to register their own faces within the Face ID system.

To combat this issue, Apple has implemented the stolen device protection feature in iOS 17.3. If it’s activated, some actions will need Face ID or Touch ID authentication to access sensitive data such as passwords and credit cards. Additionally, it adds a security delay, which makes it so actions like changing your Apple ID password “require you to wait an hour and then perform a second Face ID or Touch ID authentication.” This gives you time to report an iPhone as lost or stolen before the thief can perform “critical operations.”