{"id":270150,"date":"2026-06-11T08:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T12:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/11\/iphone-stolen-device-protection-is-thwarting-london-thieves\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T08:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T12:10:12","slug":"iphone-stolen-device-protection-is-thwarting-london-thieves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/11\/iphone-stolen-device-protection-is-thwarting-london-thieves\/","title":{"rendered":"iPhone Stolen Device Protection is thwarting London thieves"},"content":{"rendered":"

iPhone Stolen Device Protection is thwarting London thieves<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/appleinsider.com\/articles\/26\/06\/11\/iphone-stolen-device-protection-is-thwarting-prolific-london-thieves<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-11 08:03:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: appleinsider.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The number of iPhones stolen in London that have been reactivated by thieves has plummeted in recent weeks, preventing them from being sold and, hopefully, making iPhones less likely to be stolen in the future.\n<\/p>\n

The theft of iPhones has become a real problem for London in recent years. So much so that some thieves have been known to hand back a stolen phone if it turns out not to be an iPhone.\n<\/p>\n

Thieves typically use mopeds to ride up to a victim before snatching their iPhone and riding off. But the thieves don’t want the iPhone itself; they want to sell it on for cash. And that only works if they can unlock and reset it.\n<\/p>\n

But in an interview with the BBC, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley admitted that’s happening less than usual.\n<\/p>\n

The comment came as Rowley was calling on tech firms to make stolen phones harder to unlock and sell. But he also admitted that Apple appears to have already made a huge dent in the problem with an existing security feature.\n<\/p>\n

Stolen, but not forgotten<\/h2>\n

While iPhones have supported Stolen Device Protection since 2023, Apple enabled it by default with the iOS 26.4 update in March 2026.\n<\/p>\n

Stolen Device Protection, when enabled, requires biometric authentication when doing a range of things. Vitally for stolen iPhones, those things include turning off Lost Mode as well as erasing its content and settings.\n<\/p>\n

Some security actions even require a delay before they can be enacted, giving the owner of a stolen iPhone the time to mark it as lost using the Find My network.\n<\/p>\n

This means that a thief cannot reset an iPhone, even if they know your passcode. And that may well have been enough to make iPhones more difficult for thieves to sell on.\n<\/p>\n

Rowley told the BBC Radio 4’s Today program that thieves were using software to “factory reset” devices before selling them on. But he says that Apple has “cracked” the problem with data showing that “the vast majority of phones” stolen in recent weeks have not been reset.\n<\/p>\n

Rowley also…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

iPhone Stolen Device Protection is thwarting London thieves https:\/\/appleinsider.com\/articles\/26\/06\/11\/iphone-stolen-device-protection-is-thwarting-prolific-london-thieves Publish Date: 2026-06-11 08:03:00 Source Domain:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":270154,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/photos5.appleinsider.com\/gallery\/58238-118686-IMG_4772-xl.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[69,77,57],"class_list":["post-270150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iphone","tag-ios","tag-ios-26","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270155,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270150\/revisions\/270155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}