- The Met Police are calling on tech companies to make stolen phones harder to reset
- They are working with Apple on this and have already seen phone theft in London reduced by 18% compared to the previous year
- Apple enabling protection against stolen devices by default likely made a big difference, and there’s evidence of another anti-theft tool in the works
Smartphones are a major target for thieves. After all, they’re probably the most valuable device most people carry, and their value increases further when thieves export them to countries like China, where devices without local government restrictions are highly sought after. But the British Met Police is working with Apple to make smartphones significantly less attractive to thieves.
As reported by the BBC, the Met Police are calling on technology companies to make stolen phones harder to reset and recycle, and are working with Apple to achieve this. Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley underlined the strategy, stating: “If stolen phones cannot be reactivated, their value collapses and so does the incentive to steal them.”
And progress has reportedly already been made on that front, with Apple said to have “cracked” the technical problem that previously allowed thieves to factory reset devices using illegal software.
It’s unclear if Apple has made any changes behind the scenes, but one thing it certainly has done is enable Stolen Device Protection by default in iOS 26.4. With this feature enabled, there is a delay before things like passwords can be changed when the phone is not in a familiar location like a user’s home. The idea is that a user will then have time to get to another device and mark their phone as lost or stolen before thieves can gain access.
A big drop already
As a result, Sir Mark claims that “the vast majority of phones” stolen in recent weeks in London have not been factory reset.
But even before this software update, progress was being made, with the Met reporting that 14,000 fewer phones were stolen in London between June 2025 and May 2026, a drop of 18% compared to the previous year.
This won’t be entirely down to Apple’s work, as the Met has also been doing things like using e-bikes, drones and live facial recognition to combat theft in recent months. But it all makes a difference.
And Apple appears to be deploying another anti-theft technology soon, as there is evidence in the iOS code of an upcoming feature that will use an iPhone’s sensors to detect when it’s likely to be stolen and then automatically lock it. It’s a feature that sounds a lot like Theft Detection Lock on Android – and the Met actually noted that Google and Samsung are also working to combat phone theft.
So even if we never “get down to zero crime”, as Sir Mark noted, “this will make a huge difference.”
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