Q: Stolen iPhone 6 (offline, locked) - dissapeared from Find my iPhone/changed iCloud account

MY iPhone 5s was stolenlast friday nov 27th 2015, thief grabbed it from my hand while i was using it. Didnt havepasslock protection on, but immediately locked it& turned on lost mode. Then proceeded to change each, every and all passwords on every imaginable apps linked to my person (dont forget paypal, people). The thing is about 6 hours later i received email notification saying "your iphone is being erased". And yesterday another email notification informing me "iPhone has been found. Lost Mode enabled on iPhone. Your phone last reported location will be available for 24 hours. Verify with My Apple ID to view location of the iPhone". Its now outside of my city, in another island but still within country i live in. And it is no longer locatable from Find iPhone, on it I now only have 3 devices whereas there used to be 4. So thief managed to remove it from Find iPhone. Can they really not be able to use it so long as i DO NOT REMOVE this device FROM MY APPLE ACCOUNT?

Any thoughts highly appreciated

Did you "verify" the Apple ID?

Those email that you got to ask you to "verify" your Apple ID after your iPhone was "found" were phishing attempts from the thieves to get you to give them your Apple ID and password in order for them to remove the phone from  Find my iPhone and activation lock. If the phone is no longer listed as you say, the thieves were successful and the phone is probably gone for ever and clear of activation lock.

Sorry.

My iPhone 6 was stolen in Las Vegas on 10-29-2015. The thief
turned it off right away therefore I could not track it. It was in a Lost Mode
until last week, it disappeared from my account. Then I received three
iMessages:

To (my Apple ID xxxxxx)

Dear,

Your Apple ID was signed in iCloud on Alexander’s iPhone. If
you believe an unauthorized person accessed your account please sign in and
manage your account immediately by going to http://appleid.vpr-icloud.com/en
(Apple support).

I did not click on the link because my name was missing. Then I received two more iMessages:

To (my Apple ID xxxxxx)

Dear,

Your lost iPhone has been found, please refer to specific
location http://www.retrive-appleid.com/en
(Apple support)  No, I did not click on
the link.

Two days ago I received a text message from this phone
626-988-6233 with the same message. I went to the police to report it.

My question is; how did the thief know my Apple ID?

Thank you

M

You were right not to click on the link in the messages. Hopefully the police will have a better chance of recovering your iPhone now that they have a phone number to track.

As for how they knew your Apple ID, two possibilities:

1) You had not passcode protected your phone, and they went into Settings before you put it in Lost Mode.

2) They tried to restore and activate it, which would prompt them to enter your Apple ID's password before allowing them to do so. This is part of the Activation Lock anti-theft mechanism. That's probably why they sent you those messages in an attempt to get your password.

HI Stevejobfan0123,

I did have passcode protection on. That is why it's bothering me. Anyway, I have changed the password on all my emails and bank accounts.

Thank you. 

M

Alert to all Iphone users!!

My Iphone 6s was stolen yesterday (It was locked with hard 4 digit passcode and fingerprint), I turned on Lost Mode, but the robber was faster and had already turned off or enabled airplane mode.

My Apple ID password can be restored by my Gmail account, so I also switched the password, so he would not be able to access the email account from the cellphone, even if he managed to unlock.

My Gmail account password can be restored by a alternate email or by text message to my stolen iphone.

Later on during the night he did the following steps:
1) Reset my Gmail password using the text message restore function (Text messages are shown in lock screen).

2) Reset my FindMyIphone password using the email restore function.

3) Deleted the Iphone from my FindMyIphone account

4) Now he has a brand new Iphone 6s without any tracking possible...

My question is: How did he find out my email address (it's the same as used in my apple ID)?
     If he connects the cellphone to the computer, is this information shown?
After removing the Iphone from my apple account, can he format/reset the cellphone, even without my 4digit passcode?

APPLE!! HOW DO YOU ALLOW SOMEONE TO RESET A PASSWORD AND REMOVE THE IPHONE FROM THE ACCOUNT, WITHOUT GIVING ME ANY TIME TO REVERT THIS ACTION? There should be at least a 24h time frame where this action can be reverted... even if done at a local apple store!!

P.S. I have alerted my carrier and the set a IMEI block, but there is no way to know if this worked...

Was your Apple ID password the same as your gmail password? That would make it much easier. Text messages will only appear on the lock screen if you enable this feature, but you apparently did enable it.

Regarding your email address, If you have set up Siri to be active on the home screen, if you hold the HOME button and say "Who owns this phone?" Siri will display your contact info. Useful if someone finds your phone and wants to contact you to return it. But a security flaw if you have your own email address in your contact record.

Thank you for the info Lawrence.

Both Apple ID and gmail passwords were different, but notice that none of the passwords were discovered, they were reset!

So he never discovered my password...

Yes, like many other iphone users, my messages were shown on the locked screen.

Notice that even the 2step gmail validation would not have saved me, since the validation is done by a text message to you cellphone!!

My son's iPhone 6s was stolen at the EDM festival in NYC about a week ago. He had an uncommon 4-digits access code on the phone, and a strong passcode associated with his iCloud account. He contacted me immediately, and I accessed Find Phone on my iPhone promptly, setting the "Lost Phone" switch on right away. Find Phone said his phone was powered off already, but that "Lost" would be activated as soon as the phone connected with the network when powered on next. Then this afternoon (a week and a half later), we were informed thru his iPhone replacement that the stolen phone had just connected to the network. He went to the local Apple Store immediately rather than tapping on the link in the message sent to him. Apple said nothing could be done. When I got back into Find Phone, his stolen 6s was no longer listed in our inventory of Apple products. This suggests one (or both) of two things: 1. Apple's "Lost" system is being accessed by someone who can readily access their Lost security system (perhaps a current/former employee); and/or 2. The Lost system is easily corrupted/hacked, leaving it vulnerable to theft. Either way, Apple's customers are being given false assurances that our phones are less vulnerable than I now know they really are. To be entirely clear, both the 4-digit access code on the iPhone and his iCloud password were complicated and not accessible to the thief. My son was told when he reported the loss to Lost & Found at the festival that about 80 other phones had been stolen.

One possibility is that the first email you received from "iCloud" was actually not from icloud but was a phishing email taking you to an iCloud looking site that was a spoof of the real iCloud site. This was attempted when our phone was lost. I almost fell for it, but thankfully Google Chrome saw it was a fake and stopped me.