Could this critical iPhone security feature make you a scam target? Here’s how to protect yourself
Could this critical iPhone security feature make you a scam target? Here’s how to protect yourself
Publish Date: 2026-06-05 08:00:00
Source Domain: tech.yahoo.com
Losing your iPhone is a scary proposition.
Between calendars, banking apps and GPS navigation, a lot of us rely on our phones just to go about our daily lives. And if you don’t back your iPhone up to the cloud regularly, you risk losing photos, videos, text messages and other precious memories.
If you forget your iPhone in an Uber or a public bathroom, Apple has a feature designed to help you get it back: enabling Lost Mode. You can opt to display a short message and a recovery phone number from a different device. In an ideal world, a concerned citizen would find your phone, reach out to that number and set up a time to make a handoff, restoring your phone to you in short order.
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But that very feature could open you up to scams. So should you use it at all?
As the New York Times recently chronicled, thieves can use that recovery phone number to make threats. Alex Pikula, a Chicago resident, had his iPhone snatched out of his hands in London; he set it to Lost Mode and displayed his mother’s phone number as the contact.
What phone thieves want is for the phone’s owner to unlink their Apple ID. Until they do so, the phone has negligible resale value.
Often, the playbook goes like this: First, the thieves sent messages posing as Apple support, cheerfully encouraging the phone’s owner to unlink their Apple ID to protect their information. Pikula’s mother received texts indicating the phone would be auctioned on the black market and her son’s personal information, including his full name and address, would go with it.
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If messages like that don’t work, the thieves switch tactics.
Pikula’s mother received a string of threatening messages: “I know who you are and where you live.” “I’ve killed or far less than a phone before.” “We will see if you value your life over this phone.” The thieves sent a video of a man holding a gun.
The threats were almost certainly empty, said Eva Velasquez, the president and CEO of the…
