It’s almost as if having your iPhone 18 Pro Max stolen is worse than having your house robbed. It’s not just losing an expensive device—your iPhone holds so much of your private life that criminals don’t even have to do the work of ransacking your place for cash, jewelry, credit cards, and electronics.
Reports have detailed how criminals can use your iPhone to break into your iCloud and bank accounts to quickly drain your finances and steal your identity by permanently locking you out of your Apple Account. That’s in addition to cutting off contacts, notes, emails, and photos. How? Thieves watch and wait for you to enter your passcode, memorize it, and then snatch your iPhone out of your hand while you’re using it. Once they have your device and passcode, they can immediately change your passcode and Apple Account password, and from there, even the iPhone Recovery Key–the only information Apple currently recognizes as proof of your identity.
Forget everything you know about Find My iPhone and iCloud backup. Once thieves have changed your phone’s basic information–which can take just a few minutes–Find My won’t help you, and neither will Apple. But it turns out that there’s a way to prevent it all from happening. You might not know it, but your iPhone’s Screen Time feature hides a fairly bulletproof way to prevent thieves from locking you out of your handset (and all your other Apple devices) even if they do manage to steal your phone.
Screen Time for added protection
If you’re childless and aren’t concerned about how much you use your phone, chances are you have never used iOS’s Screen Time feature. But Screen Time has another feature that can prevent anyone from changing your most important passwords. Here’s how it works:
At a glance
- Time to complete: 3 minutes
1. Turn on the Screen Time Passcode setting
Go to Settings, tap Screen Time, tap Manage Screen Time, then tap Lock Screen Time Settings. We recommend using a different passcode from the one you use to unlock your iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max for obvious reasons.
2. Set Content & Privacy Restrictions
Next, go to Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions and toggle it on if it’s not already. Then, scroll down to the Allow Changes To section, tap Accounts, and then Don’t Allow. That will prevent anyone else who has your phone from accessing or changing passwords because they would first need to tap in the unique Screen Time password which they won’t have.
One caveat: If your iCloud account password is saved to your Passwords keychain, a thief could use your Apple Account to reset your Screen Time passcode, turn on account changes, and then change your password.
This simple Screen Time setup will stop—or at least deter—anyone from changing your iCloud password and using that information from draining your bank account, setting up credit cards in your name, and stealing your identity, as you struggle to recover your lost property, privacy, and sanity. You’ll still need to replace your iPhone, but this one setting could keep a bad day from becoming a horrible one.
You can use Stolen Device Protection to protect against the rare instance when someone has stolen your iPhone and knows your passcode. Stolen Device Protection prevents the person from performing critical device and Apple Account operations (like changing your device passcode or Apple Account password).
- Go to Settings.
- Tap Face ID & Passcode, then enter your passcode.
- Scroll down and tap Stolen Device Protection.
- Turn on Stolen Device Protection.
