Stolen phone - device list and find my iphone

Unfortunately, the email you received was NOT from Apple. You fell for a common scam. You got a text or email from “Apple” or “Apple Security” (or sometimes “Police”) saying your phone has been found and to click on a link to see its location. This is NEVER from Apple or from law enforcement; it is from the thief or fence to steal your Apple ID and identity. As soon as you clicked on the link and entered your Apple ID the thief removed Activation Lock, and also downloaded all of the data in iCloud, so go on the assumption that anything you had saved to iCloud is now in the hands of criminals. You should have deleted any such message without responding to it. Apple never gets involved in lost or stolen devices→Avoid phishing emails, fake ‘virus‘ alerts, phony support calls, and other scams

You didn’t say it still appeared on your device list (or if you did, I didn’t see it). If it does still appear, then the message that Find My had been deactivated was definitely from the thief. It can’t be tracked anymore if you erased it, but as long as you don’t delete it from your Apple ID the phone will never by usable by anyone.

If you followed the steps in the link below, did you do the last step that would remove your device from your list of Trusted Devices? This would be why it is no longer showing on your device list.

If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is lost or stolen - Apple Support

Also when you marked it as lost, did you provide any information or numbers to call if found?

Lawrence Finch wrote:

Unfortunately, the email you received was NOT from Apple. You fell for a common scam. You got a text or email from “Apple” or “Apple Security” (or sometimes “Police”) saying your phone has been found and to click on a link to see its location. This is NEVER from Apple or from law enforcement; it is from the thief or fence to steal your Apple ID and identity. As soon as you clicked on the link and entered your Apple ID the thief removed Activation Lock, and also downloaded all of the data in iCloud, so go on the assumption that anything you had saved to iCloud is now in the hands of criminals.

If there is any chance that the Apple ID password is compromised, the OP should change it (to something the criminals are unlikely to be able to guess), ASAP.

Change your Apple ID password - Apple Support

The criminals may already have removed the Activation Lock and accessed personal data, but one would still want to lock them out from accessing new data, going forward.

The erasing message will be from Apple. The message that find my iPhone was turned off was NOT from Apple. The only way to turn off Find My is with the Apple ID and password for your Apple ID account. So somehow the thief got your Apple ID. The only other way that could happen is if the phone was unlocked when it was stolen, AND the thief knew the password (possibly by watching you enter it).

Forging email FROM fields is trivially easy. The only way to find the actual sender is by viewing the raw text of the message.

Years ago a friend was writing a techno-thriller, and asked me if it was possible to send an email that appeared to come from jon.knox@archon.com, but actually came from someone else. So I replied, and the reply to him came from jon.knox@archon.com.

optical913 wrote:

I followed all steps till the last one "erase your device" via iCloud. So the data from 13 pro max was fully removed in the morning today. I did not remove anything from trusted devices.

Now is evening here and like hour ago 13 pro max dissapeared from devices list ( second photo in the post ). However 13 pro max is still on "find my iphone". I am trying to find logic in this.

I could be wrong, but I think the little red trash can icon means that you made a request to erase the device.

I don't know if there would be any special-casing saying "keep the last Find My location for an erased device around, even if the device has been removed from the device list, and can now be erased and reused by the thieves." That may be a corner case so specific that Apple Support documents do not address it clearly, and you'd need to get Apple Support to raise the question with Apple Engineering to get an answer.

I’m confused. You say you see it in iCloud with an erased icon. But then you say it isn’t in the iCloud devices list. If it isn’t in the devices list in iCloud, where are you seeing it in iCloud?