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How Apple Made Your iPhone 6 Much Less Likely To Be Stolen

This article is more than 9 years old.

To you, your new iPhone 6 looks like a gleaming sheet of technological magic -- but to a thief, it looks like a shiny, worthless brick.

That's because every iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus comes with Activation Lock -- Apple's "kill switch" -- on by default. Every phone, if stolen, can be wiped remotely and "bricked," which makes it worth almost nothing to thieves, who usually want to re-sell stolen phones quickly for profit.

Apple introduced Activation Lock with the iOS 7 release a year ago, so many current phones already have it. But the feature is opt-in, and too many iPhone users still haven't turned it on. Even today, thieves still have a good chance of striking gold -- except with the newest models.

"The iPhone 6 is going to be a less attractive device for thieves," said Max Szabo, spokesman for the San Francisco District Attorney's office, which has been  pushing for universal kill switch for the past year.

When Activation Lock is on, an AppleID and password are required to turn off Find My iPhone, sign out of iCloud, or erase and reactivate a stolen phone.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are the first new smartphones to have the kill switch on by default. Because iPhones are the most commonly stolen smartphone -- law enforcement have dubbed iPhone robberies "apple picking" -- any reason for thieves to believe their targets are likely to have phones with kill switches should lead to a drop in crime.

Smartphone crime rates have already dropped since Activation Lock debuted. Thieves, wary of robbing someone but ending up with a dud phone, stopped trying as often. In the first five months of 2014, smartphone robberies and thefts dropped significantly in San Francisco, New York City and London, a June study found.

"It's a simple game of odds on the streets," Szabo said. "We've already seen a change in street behavior."

In New York City, iPhone thefts and robberies dropped 29 and 19 percent in early 2014, while Samsung phones became attractive new targets. San Francisco and London also saw double-digit percent drops in iPhone thefts after an opt-in kill switch was offered.

Secure Our Smartphones, a coalition between the San Francisco District Attorney and New York Attorney General, has been pushing to stop smartphone crime along several different branches, but Apple's Activation Lock is the first success. Microsoft and Google said in June they would add kill switches to phones running their operating systems, and a new California law that goes into effect in July 2015 will require all phones sold in California to have a kill switch.

Carriers have been accused of dragging their feet in adopting broad policies that would make re-selling stolen phones harder. A group of users sued AT&T in 2012 for making "millions of dollars in improper profits" selling new phones and new phone plans to users whose phones had been stolen while thieves could easily re-set and re-sell phones.

Deterrence won't stop all smartphone crime, Szabo said. But he believes sucking the value out of a stolen smartphone might keep it from being stolen in the first place.

"Am I going to go rob someone at gunpoint to sell their phone as a paperweight?" Szabo said. "Probably not."

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