According to a report from the FCC Apple’s Activation Lock, a software feature introduced in iOS 7 has reduced iPhone thefts by as much as 38% in San Francisco, 24% in London and 19% in New York. The decline in thefts took place during the first 6 months since Apple introduced the new feature.
Activation Lock prevents users from disabling Find my iPhone so the original owner can keep track of where the device currently is or wipe the devices data, without inserting the correct password. In the report the FCC highly recommends enabling Activation Lock and taking smartphone thefts as serious as credit card thefts since mobile devices these days contain a lot of sensitive information and should be reported to the police immediately. Here are some tips from AmongTech that can be used to prevent your iPhone from getting stolen:
- Use a passcode on your lockscreen: You can easily set a passcode up by going to the Settings app > Touch ID & passcode
- Enable Find my iPhone: By enabling this app you will be able to not only lock your device remotely, send a sound message and message to your device so you can let the person who found it know who to call but you can also remote wipe it and keep track of its location. You can enable Find my iPhone in Settings > iCloud > Find my iPhone
