Stolen iphone

Bedders123

Hi, apologies if this isn’t the appropriate category. My iphone was recently (2 days ago) stolen by what I assumed were chancing pick pockets, however unbeknownst to me, they had watched me unlock my phone before snatching it from my hand, it was 1 in the morning in London so I didn’t bother chasing them. I didn’t have access to any other devices so went to my hotel room and waited it out until the morning. By this time they had managed to spend £3600 on 2 of my cards registered through Apple Pay and had numerous Uber trips around London. As soon as they had taken the phone they changed the Apple ID, which prevented me from remotely erasing the device. I’ve now locked the Apple account and have requested an account reset with them but this takes 24hours to be looked into. I have reported it to the police and worked with the card providers to get the money back that has been spent. I’ve changed passwords and logged out all devices on email addresses social media etc. and barred the phone. They still managed to get a dormant PayPal account up and running today which they linked to a newly created Uber account. Are there any other steps I could take to limit any further fraud while I await Apple to erase the phone? I’m conscious that they have access to pictures on the phone where I have applied for accounts etc in the past and they may be parsing my phone now for future applications. Is there anything I can do to future proof them from using the pictures or information that I have once the phone is erased? 

tacpot12

You might want to sign up for Protective Registration with CIFAS. See here:Protective Registration | Identity Protection Service | Cifas

I'm sorry this has happened to you. Unfortunately, it is quite a well known vulnerability of Apple iPhones - if someone is intending on stealing your phone, they will try to watch you enter your PIN, so that they can grab your phone, log into it and quickly change the Apple ID password. You are then locked out of your phone, and they have access to anything that is unlocked by the PIN Number and Apple ID.

I recently switched to using the 2FAS Authenticator as part of my response to this - it's does exactly the same thing as Google Authenticator, but needs a seperate PIN to get access to any of the tokens. It also allows you to backup the tokens so you can restore them to another device so you can get access to your bank accounts more quickly. 

Apple's has tried to address this, but every layer of security they add makes is harder for the rightful owner of the phone to take back control of it. You have to be very careful about using any of Apple's security - you need to think like a thief to spot how Apple haven't really understood the problem.  
 

 

Olinda99

I don't know anything about Apple never having owned one but would a solution be to either enter a very long pin which should be difficult to shoulder surf or even not use a pin at all but use fingerprints

cerebus

Hate to say this but they weren't chancing pickpockets , you were being watched very closely and as soon as they knew your pin , your phone was snatched. 

Your next phone you get needs biometrics setting up and not just a pin 

I am sorry to hear you had your phone stolen 

Grumpy_chap

Bedders123 said:

it was 1 in the morning in London so I didn’t bother chasing them.

I am sorry to hear about your experience.
It is probably best (for your safety) that you didn't chase them - these are professional criminal gangs, not just chancers.
It might have been better to report immediately to the Police, but that is for the future (though I am sure you hope the same thing won't happen a second time).