should i remove my stolen device from find my

The message is not from Apple. It's a scam.

If you remove your iPhone from the list of devices using your Apple ID, you will give whoever has your phone free access to do anything that they want with your phone.

You won't ever get the phone back, but you can at least continue to really frustrate whoever has your phone if you do not remove the phone from your list of devices.......so they can't use the phone.

Similar situation and looking for advice on if I’ve missed any steps to protect myself. My iPhone 15 pro max was just stolen in an Eastern European country. Unfortunately the Find My is off (not sure how that happened, the phone is nearly new, dont remember switching it off…anyway). I’ve changed my AppleID password, the device is still in my iCloud. Since it’s a 15 pro max, it only had a local European eSIM which has been deactivated. Apple wallet cards have been removed. And we just returned from giving a report to local police. I understand it’s highly unlikely the phone will be recovered. It is insured. However, is there anything else I can do to protect or disable access to the information on the phone?

My phone was stolen and I've been getting the exact messages word for word, typo for typo! its a huge scam, do not listen to it!

Saegzz wrote:

How does removing it from Find My devices give thief access? Is t the phone locked either way?

Removing the device from FindMy will remove the activation lock, allowing the thief to reset the phone and use it as their own or sell it. So long as it is not removed, it’s a useless brick.

Don’t reward the thief by removing it from Find My.

Do not remove it. If you do the thief will be able to use it. You can erase it remotely via Find my…

The thief is scaring you into removing the phone so he can use it.

+1

Yves:

Without your passcode, your data is irretrievable by ANYONE.

As long as the device remains on YOUR account, it can’t be re-used by anyone else.

So do NOT remove it from your account.

The scam messages are tied to your phone number (not the device itself) and were probably obtained by the thief from your SIM.

(That SIM by the way was deactivated by your carrier as soon as you reported the theft)

You’ll likely continue receiving these sorts of messages for quite a while.

Learn to ignore them.

Hi,

I have a similar situation as the original poster. I do not either want to reward the thief but I'm thinking that I rather have the thief reset it (and have all data erased) and resold rather than a jailbreak being available in some months or years and my data being exposed. Or by some unlucky coincidence risk to be locked out of my appleid if the thief guesses my passcode correctly.

In my case it is an iPhone 14 with iOS 17.5.1 that was stolen. Successfully marked as lost, sent remote erase command (but not executed as phone was not online), appleid password changed, SIM deactivate.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

A hint to the fact that this is an extortion scam based on leverage the criminals do not have lies in how the criminals sending the message pretend to be wanting to help you safeguard information from a phone that has supposedly been hacked - while they simultaneously threaten to sell all your information to the black market if you fail to meet their demands.

Someone who would do the latter is NOT to be trusted when they say they they are contacting you to protect you. If they actually wanted to protect you, they could refrain from selling your information (which they don’t actually have!) to the black market without a quid pro quo - and they could hand over your phone to police. Why didn’t they? If they had actually hacked the phone, and had the ability to erase it, they would have done so themselves without taking the risk of contacting you for “approval” of the theft. Again, why didn’t they?

They didn’t because they are not your friends, and because they can’t get into the phone without tricking you into helping them.

Not that you could trust them to protect your information if they did have it and if you did comply. An extortionist might blackmail you again, and again, and again; each time reneging on the promise to protect/erase your data.

If he removes (turns off) Find my… the thief will be able to erase the phone and activation lock will be off, thus enabling the thief to activate the phone as a new phone .

Authentication codes are sent to your AppleID Trusted Devices … if they can’t access your passcode protected device, they can’t receive the code.

Alternatively codes can sent individually via SMS to Trusted numbers … but this requires knowledge of your AppleID AND associated Password. And w/o your “active and provisioned” SIM in the old phone, it can’t receive an SMS even if one was sent.

Any SMS will be received at the current location of the active SIM for that line; presumably your new replacement device.

Do NOT remove it from Find my...

It could be that the phone will never turn on, connect and erase. It could be junked, thrown away, or disassembled for parts by now.

No one knows except the thief, so why run the risk...

Thanks Felipe. I’m not sure I follow. What is the risk if I remove that device from my account? It is marked as lost and remote request to erase is sent.

The only “risk” I see is that the thief resets and erase the device (which is what I’m after) then resells it (which I don’t care about).

Thanks for bearing with me, this is just not clear to me.

Hi so I actually did remove my old devices ( because I felt it was a security risk to have my old devices)from find my iPhone as I did not see the harm when all my data was transferred to a new one and everything else is factory reset. Was that a bad idea I can take it back and now I am worried.

The only thing you did was to allow the thief to now use/sell your device. In most cases, you will want to leave it associated to your Apple ID to prevent that from happening. There is no privacy issue by leaving your device locked to your Apple ID. Your data is safe, because the thief will still need to erase the device before they are able to use it.