Turn On Stolen Device Protection in iOS 17.3

Yeah, probably. You’d want to turn Stolen Device Protection off before taking it in. Which would be a good idea anyway if there’s a chance they’ll take the phone away for repair.

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Looks like Stolen Device Protection doesn’t play well with MDM at the moment.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/96277

After seeing your comment and looking at your link I still don’t know. What’s MDM? :slight_smile:

I think MDM refers to mobile device management, which allow enterprises/organisational device owners to set up profiles on and “control” the devices, such as scheduling updates.

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One problem with this: if you work with your hands (or play a lot of golf like me) and your fingers are regularly getting roughed up you may not be able to get back in.

You can always get back in. You just disable SDP. At worst this takes 1 hr if you’re remote and the delay kicks in.

17.4 beta apparently has an Always option added, instead of just Significant Locations.

I’ll be using that, given the problem with the latter is social places you may frequent often including pubs, bars, etc, become “Significant Locations”, so if you’re device is stolen from there, the lockout protections won’t work.

As I say, if Touch ID doesn’t work well for you, you probably shouldn’t turn on Stolen Device Protection. But then you need to be really careful not to enter your passcode in public such that other people can see it.

No. Read @ace’s article and this thread. For all we know, there is no relationship between Significant Locations and the “familiar locations” that SDP uses to determine if it shall enforce a 1-hr delay. In fact, I took the liberty of going to one of my listed Significant Locations yesterday and sure enough, 1-hr delay imposed since this significant location was neither home nor work. You have nothing to worry about a bar showing up in your Significant Locations.

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There must be some relationship. From the Apple support article entitled ‘About Stolen Device Protection for the iPhone’:

"To turn on Stolen Device Protection you must use two-factor authentication for your Apple ID and set up or enable the following on your iPhone: a device passcode; Face ID or Touch ID; Find My; and Significant Locations (Location Services)*. [emphasis added]

Note: The footnote provides the path to the Significant Location setting.

Oh heck, the reporting from some sources on this has been confusing to say the least. Never mind Apple’s lack of clarity to boot.

Except we already know that it still works if you disable Significant Locations. Clearly there is some disagreement here between what Apple has published and what is really going on. Not to mention that Apple has been very vague (perhaps intentionally so) about what actually constitutes “familiar locations”.

I’m afraid I agree. It’s about as clear as mud at this point. Considering how long it has been since Joanna Stern first started reporting about this problem, I’m a bit surprised we don’t have more clarity at this point. Granted, Apple only just launched the feature for users, but they certainly must have been thinking about it for much longer.

My guess is that iOS is using a subset of the significant locations - not just locations you go to often, but locations where you spend a high percentage of your time. That’s why home and the office are good examples - we spend a significant amount of time at these places, and most of us use our phones often there, too.

The question, I suppose, is if you are a regular at a restaurant or bar (think Cliff or Norm at Cheers) - is that also a significant location? For me, that is not a concern - I just don’t spend a great deal of time at places like that.

That said, if you go on vacation to a resort and spend a week or two weeks and have your phone stolen at the resort - will that be a significant location?

I hope that Apple clarifies this at some point.

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Stolen Device Protection has gone amok. I was debugging an Apple Watch/iPhone integration problem for my wife the other day, and I needed to access her passwords. She had fallen asleep on the couch next to me (so her face wasn’t available for FaceID), and I went into Settings/Passwords expecting to use her passcode to get to the passwords — as I have done many times before (including twice since installing iOS 17.3). But instead of getting the job done, I was met with a “No you can’t, SDP won’t let you” warning (including a link to the SDP page).

We were at home. I waited a few minutes and tried again (no change). I don’t know what constitutes a “familiar” location, but we spend a lot of time at home, so if that doesn’t qualify, I don’t know what does.

I filed a bug report with Apple (assuming that does anything at all).

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I am also confused what Apple thinks is a “familiar” location. I have been traveling and the last signification location from over a week ago is an airport I spent an hour in. Most troubling is that now I am at home and Home is not considered a familiar location by SDP. How can I make sure Home is recognized as “familiar” location when my phone spends most of it’s time there (being retired)?

It seems pretty clear that the whole Significant Locations part of Stolen Device Protection is a little wonky. I wouldn’t stress about it for now, and it will be somewhat different in iOS 17.4. In the meantime, you can either turn it off or just deal with a delay if you perform one of the rather uncommon actions that it protects.

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: iOS 17.3 Stands Out from Other OS Updates with Stolen Device Protection

ApplePay security works (among other things) by setting up a shared key Time-based code with the bank and your device. Disabling the card in Apple Pay using iCloud.com or the like is disabling that key at the bank end. Your device will learn about it when online, but the network connection is not required and the formerly valid code provided by your offline device will not be accepted by the bank.

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You can disable find my through iCloud.com without the delay, is my understanding.

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