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About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone

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Re: About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone

#41

Post by whartung »

paxys wrote: post #14
dylan604 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it prevents reselling the phone, it doesn't prevent the phone from being stolen. It would be a dumb criminal to leave you your phone to allow you to immediately call the police if you've been mugged. Just take the phone, trash it literally placing it in a bin or destroying it or both. At the end of the day, you still don't have the phone whether the thief profits from it or not. All this will do is prevent cr…

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

An interesting scenario I heard was a fellow in, I think, Colombia. He was visiting, and was looking at his phone on the sidewalk. As he was looking at it, a pair of people rode up on a motorcycle or scooter, grabbed it out of his hand, and drove off.

They just got themselves an unlocked phone.

I assume this protects, somewhat, against this by the fact that were the thieves to try and change anything, there's another step of verification necessary than there was before.

And I think it was very clever of Apple to leverage the device location as an ad hoc "2FA". "Something you know, some place you are."

Re: About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone

#42

Post by dhdhdudhsg »

kemayo wrote: post #31
dhdhdudhsg wrote: post #23

I’ll be using this but what a stupid exception imo. I work in a big building where anyone could walk in without id and simply defeat the protection. Hell, a disgruntled coworker contractor or customer could be in on it. > When your iPhone is in a familiar location, these additional steps are not required, and you can use your device passcode like usual. Familiar locations typically include your home, work, and certai…

This is a pretty direct response to the WSJ's iPhone theft story from last year[1], which was focused on people managing to shoulder-surf your passcode while you're in a public place, steal your phone, then use your passcode to reset your Apple ID password (thus locking you out of being able to report the phone as stolen). It apparently relied on multiple people and a certain amount of social engineering -- one party…

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.

Re: About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone

#44

Post by rezonant »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #27
pc86 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I would say that moving the phone from the place I left it would promote it from "lost" to "stolen". Can you now envision a conversation between this passenger and the pharmacy clerk: "I found this phone in some car" "What do you want me to do about it?" "Hold on to it until some guy I don't know comes to claim it?" "We don't want this personal property! Go away!" [Waymo car is gone now] [Passenger absconds with phon…

Moving the phone from the place it was left with consent of the owner is not theft.

And it's not that crazy to leave lost property with a nearby business (presumably a trusted one)- sure they could say no but then you could just find another way to return the device.

Also why would you not be able to track it any more if they left it at the pharmacy, it's not like the Find My Device feature only works in Waymos. I guess you just mean due to the sequencing of wiping before noticing the text message?

Re: About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone

#45

Post by metalcrow »

lokar wrote: post #34

A one hour delay? Really? I don’t get it, how does that really help?

If you're robbed at gunpoint, and they demand you unlock your phone for them, this protection means they would have to kidnap you for at least an hour to then unlock it again. The former happened pretty regularly, but upgrading to kidnapping is a lot riskier, more dangerous, and invites a serious police response.

Re: About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone

#46

Post by kemayo »

pc86 wrote: post #18
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an Android phone, and a few months ago I left it behind in a Waymo autonomous vehicle. Awhile ago, I added the "Find My Device" site to my bookmarks and I'd tested it out a few times. So I started there. And I also used Google Voice to place a voice call, so when it didn't ring in my home, I knew it wasn't here. The Waymo passenger answered and there was much giggling. She kept saying she didn't know what to d…

> 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.

It's also not leaving the phone at the mercy of an unknowable number of future Waymo customers until it got back to the depot.

Re: About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone

#48

Post by r00fus »

stirlo wrote: post #30

This also solves a somewhat unique problem I experienced recently with iCloud keychain where all your passwords are only as secure as your passcode (and anyone that knows it). I had to hand my phone over to a third party repairer. This would mean they needed to know my passcode so I wanted to lock down the phone to allow them to perform whatever diagnostic steps they might need but to restrict access to the wallet an…

At least the passcode section of settings can indeed be restricted by ScreenTime. I've done this as my aging parents often want change the passcode then forget their new passwords (and sometimes get paranoid).

Re: About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone

#49

Post by rollcat »

stirlo wrote: post #30

This also solves a somewhat unique problem I experienced recently with iCloud keychain where all your passwords are only as secure as your passcode (and anyone that knows it). I had to hand my phone over to a third party repairer. This would mean they needed to know my passcode so I wanted to lock down the phone to allow them to perform whatever diagnostic steps they might need but to restrict access to the wallet an…

You took unnecessary risk. Wipe your device before handing it over, and restore it from a backup after the repair.

Also consider evil maid, or other kinds of backdoors (like jailbreaks).

Re: About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone

#50

Post by gnicholas »

bertil wrote: post #17
gnicholas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> I wish it were possible to designate an app to require FaceID Developers can require that. Several apps I use do.

Oh yeah, I wish that it were possible as a use preference, on a per-app basis.
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