Turn On This New iPhone Setting to Protect Your Money and Photos

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/iphone-stolen-device-protection-ios-update-bbe68a11
https://archive.ph/Gf5W3

Turn On This New iPhone Setting to Protect Your Money and Photos
Apple’s Stolen Device Protection in iOS 17.3 can protect your iPhone if it gets stolen along with your passcode
By Nicole Nguyen and Joanna Stern
Jan. 22, 2024 2:46 pm ET

How do you protect your life savings, decades of photos and the rest of your digital life? By flipping a new switch buried in your iPhone’s settings menu.

On Monday, as a part of the now-available iOS 17.3 update, Apple released Stolen Device Protection. The setting adds a layer of security that could foil a thief who has stolen both your iPhone and the passcode you use to unlock it.

The release follows The Wall Street Journal’s yearlong investigation on iPhone thefts happening across the country. Thieves with an iPhone and its passcode quickly lock their victims out of their Apple accounts by changing the password and other settings. Then they go for the money, draining bank accounts, opening credit cards and more. One thief, who is now in prison in Minnesota, told us how he stole hundreds of iPhones and hundreds of thousands of dollars by taking advantage of this vulnerability.

Stolen Device Protection makes a lot of that harder for a criminal—if you turn it on. How does it work? Is there a downside? Are there loopholes criminals can exploit? We have been testing it for the past few weeks to get the answers.

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