Greg Fraska has been locked out of his Apple account since October and has done just about everything to regain access. He offered to come from Florida to Apple headquarters in California to personally verify his identity, or write a check for $10,000 to access the account.

A 46-year-old man’s iPhone 14 Pro was stolen while he was in a bar in Chicago, and then the criminals wanted to empty his bank account and prevent him from remotely tracking the stolen phone. They used his password to change his Apple ID password. They also activated an elusive Apple security setting known as a “recovery key”. At the same time, they imposed an “impenetrable lock” on his account.

After Cameron Devine’s iPhone 13 Pro was stolen from a Boston bar in August, the 24-year-old said he spent hours on the phone with Apple support trying to regain access to more than a decade of data. All the representatives told him the same thing: no recovery key, no access. Devine said he had never heard of the key, let alone created one.

Victims reported that an iPhone was stolen at night in clubs or other public places. Some said they were snatched from their hands by strangers after they managed to guess the password.

According to the Wall Street Journal: “Knowing him “password for iphone“, A thief can easily reset a victim’s Apple ID password in an app Settings, even if Face ID or Touch ID is enabled. The thief can then turn it off. “find my iphone“ on the device, preventing the owner from tracking its location or remotely wiping data via iCloud. The thief can also remove other trusted Apple devices from the account to further block the victim.

At the same time, knowing the iPhone passcode allows the thief to useHello Apple Pay and purchasedI access to banking applications using passwords stored in iCloud Keychain. Even if Face ID or Touch ID is enabled on the iPhone, thieves can simply bypass these authentication methods and use the option to enter a passcode on the device.

According to the Wall Street Journal