That's not my understanding of the situation at all.

The journalist:

- Marked the phone as lost;

- Wiped all data;

FTA: As quickly as possible, I did all the things you’re supposed to do when your phone is lost or stolen —- mark it as lost, cut off service, and remotely erase it

She did not, however, remove (delete) that iPhone from her iCloud account, which means that the iPhone can't be factory reset by the thieves because "FindMy" is still activated.

FTA: As long as I didn’t remove the phone from my Apple account or the Find My app, the phone was essentially bricked to anyone without the passcode and my iCloud password

The iPhone did not, at any time, leak any personal information. What probably happened is that she had a SIM card on it, and from ejecting the tray and putting the SIM into another phone they managed to get her phone number, from which they started contacting her with the threats/scams.

I think this wouldn't even be possible with a e-SIM in the newer iPhone models.

She actually answered this in one of the comment threads on the article: when accessing the phone it will prompt you to enter the password for the Apple ID which happened to be her email address which happens to be able to receive iMessages. https://www.openweb.com/share/2hQferBhnDlJgGo4oE9Nv6wGjAX

She's wrong - the activation prompt ***'s out most of the email address. She likely had an emergency contact or 'lost mode' message on the device. The latter would still be present if remote wiped.

Or she had an email address like {firstname}@{firstnamelastname.com}.

Thanks for this informative post. I was a little confused as well.

Right, now we have e-SIMs. So what was the reason for physical SIMs in the first place?

iPhone 14's sold in the US do not have a SIM tray. They are eSIM only.

In the case that I lost my phone, though, instead of it being stolen, I really might want my contact info displayed on the lock screen so someone who finds it can get it back to me.

Yes, I know, in many anti-social places in the world (like most US cities), it's much more likely that the phone was stolen, or that even in the lost-phone case, the person who finds it will be shitty and not try to return it. But in many (most?) other places people are generally honest and will try to return something that's lost.

Then again, if you know that it was stolen, you should be able to keep the thief from getting your contact info.

From the article comments:

“when trying to reset my phone they are prompted to enter my iCloud password. My iCloud email is also one of the ways to reach me via iMessage. So they used that to contact me”

How exactly can they get the phone number though? The only thing I can think of is if there was an unlocked (no PIN) physical SIM-card, and they could just insert it into another phone.

And yes, e-SIM solves this problem.

I think in this instance they got the email associated with the iCloud and messaged her on that.

Edit: she replied to a comment on the article: "when trying to reset my phone they are prompted to enter my iCloud password. My iCloud email is also one of the ways to reach me via iMessage. So they used that to contact me"

Organized crime networks have insiders/hacked machines at the phone carriers where they can perform IMEI lookups in the carrier database to get the subscribers phone number.

The Lock Screen displays what you ask it to. When you mark a phone as Lost or perform a Remote Erase, you can push down your contact data if you'd like (ie - if you think a "friendly" found the phone and you want it back), or you can elect to type nothing, an offensive message, etc. Likewise for the "Medical ID" feature (which is also available with the phone locked) - you can elect to display lots of details, some details, or no details at all.

Well this also applies if someone friendly finds your phone and wishes to return it. It's a catch 22 there.

Return it to an Apple store? Apple knows who to contact.

I know Apple doesn’t really have the financial incentive for this, but some kind of prepaid mailing label you could print and use for this would be an option if there’s not a nearby Apple store.

And if there is no Apple Store around? There are entire countries without those, and even more that only have a few total.

Most countries, including mine or the ones I'm likely to travel to, don't have Apple Stores.

If my phone gets stolen from my pocket in the US, the chance of it wandering to the third world and then a Good Samaritan trying to give it back seem abysmal.

But what if you don't live in the US. You actually live in a "third world" country?

These are the type of things that make it very hard for Apple to penetrate markets outside the US.

What we're discussing: you can put any message you want on the phone for how it can be returned to you.

Some people are mentioning that if Apple is given the phone, Apple will also help (and that they'd prefer to not put that message in place as a result).

> These are the type of things that make it very hard for Apple to penetrate markets outside the US.

Can you explain how this is much worse than, say, Google or Samsung?

> Some people are mentioning that if Apple is given the phone, Apple will also help

No, they will not. It is just a wish. And it makes little sense for Apple to be doing that.

If you bring a found iPhone to Apple, Apple will not tell you any information about the associated customer. They don't have any infrastructure to return it. The only thing they can and will do is take the device and recycle it.