Your passcode is designed to keep your iPhone and its data safe, but it’s far too vulnerable to be considered truly secure. Once a thief identifies those six-digits on your Lock Screen, it’s game over. That makes it a prime target for bad actors in cities around the world. It’s easy enough to spot over someone’s shoulder, but some thieves are orchestrating routines to capture passwords with precision, tasking one person with recording others using the passcode on their phones for easy reference after a theft.
Your passcode unlocks deeply personal parts of your iPhone. Within minutes of stealing the device, thieves can reset your iCloud password by punching in the digits they watched you type. (You can see this for yourself: On your iPhone, head to Settings > [Your Name] > Password & Security > Change Password. Your phone will only ask for your passcode again to begin resetting your iCloud password. Yikes.)
From there, it’s smooth sailing for the thieves. They can remove other devices from the Find My network and turn off Find My tracking altogether, locking you out of all of your connected Apple devices. You lost your iPhone, but now you can’t use your Mac or iPad, either. And, because they changed your password, you can’t fix the problem on your end anymore.
