Having your iPhone stolen is undoubtedly quite a traumatic experience, which no one wants to walk through. Fortunately, I haven’t had this experience myself (the only time I had my cell phone stolen because I fell asleep with it on the bus was 20 years ago), but I know several cases of people who have. the bitter trance and I could see the abyss in their eyes (and mind you, it can be extrapolated to many other smartphone models, I’m focusing on Apple for the context of this message).

I have always observed in these cases that the initial concern is with the device itself, its loss and the economic cost of replacing it, and later comes digital asset concerns we had in the same and they also flew. The clearest example of this is photos and videos, but it’s not necessarily the only one, and with the proliferation of cloud backup services, its impact is diminishing every day.

Now, after those first two concerns, usually comes the third, which I think is the worst of all: And what happens if a thief manages to access the contents of the iPhone? This is of course less likely in a robbery by carelessness, rapture or similar techniques where the victim is “anonymous” to the thief, but much more feasible if the robbery takes place between people who know each other, either by more or less close, and if as a result the thief may have an idea of ​​the device’s locking key. In such a case, the risk is undoubtedly the most worrisome.

Apple’s operating system has long had the “anonymous” theft protection features I mentioned above, but Now with iOS 17.3, it adds a feature to protect the contents of our iPhone if it ends up in the wrong hands. A feature that prevents a thief, even if he has the device and its key, from performing certain particularly sensitive operations.

To this end, if this mode has been activated, iPhone will not allow you to perform certain operations (such as changing your mobile phone password, Apple account password, making purchases, etc.) without biometric identification, whether through Face ID or Touch ID. Until now it was possible to use the smartphone unlock code in these cases, from now on it will no longer be possible. In this way, while the thief is not prevented from accessing the contents of the iPhone, he is prevented from performing certain particularly dangerous actions.

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