Erasing a drowned phone from find my

When an iPhone is dropped into the sea or ocean, the saltwater is extremely corrosive. Over time, it can damage the internal components beyond repair — especially the logic board, which holds the phone’s memory and storage. If the phone stays underwater for a long period, the chances of it ever turning on again become very slim.

However, even if the device is physically damaged, the data stored on it doesn’t just instantly disappear. iPhones encrypt data by default, so even if someone recovered the device and managed to repair parts of it, accessing the data without your passcode would still be nearly impossible.

As for remotely erasing the phone — that depends on whether the phone connects to the internet again. If the device is offline (like sitting at the bottom of the sea), you won’t be able to send an erase command through iCloud’s "Find My" until it gets a signal. And if the phone is too damaged to power on, that connection will never happen — meaning the erase command won’t go through.

But in terms of data safety, it’s very likely that corrosion would damage the device beyond any practical data recovery, and the encryption on iPhones makes data extraction extremely difficult without your credentials.