Last week my daughter had her iPhone pick pocketed. She was close to an Apple store so went in and used the Find My Iphone thing but the phone was already switched off.
They helped her to lock the phone and set a message to ask the “finder” to contact me to return the phone. They assured me that the finder could not see my number just a button to make contact.

After a couple of days we had to cancel the SIM as we were pretty sure the phone wasn’t coming back.

Today I got a text message from a German number (the number shows up on google as being common to many scams) saying that my daughters iPhone had been found and giving a “file” which was actually a web link to click on. It referred to my daughter by name and obviously they got my mobile number somehow. The Apple store assured us that the phone could not be opened and in no way were my details visible, but either he was wrong and it shows a contact number or somehow the phone has been hacked open.

We checked on Find My Iphone again, but nothing new to report on there.

Has anyone had any experience of this? She’s currently going through resetting all her non fingerprint protected accounts and changing passwords.

Cheers

I can think of two potential ways to get your number:
– the sim card has numbers stored on it.
– your number is listed as an emergency contact on the lock screen

I guess they could have potentially guessed the pin too or picked pocketed it unlocked…

It could easily be switched on and the message not displayed if it is somewhere that doesn’t have signal or by removing the SIM card and stopping it going online. Which will stop the Apple Find my Phone features working.

I didn’t think ‘rooting’ an iPhone was a thing these days, so expect for stripping for parts I can’t see how a stolen iPhone makes any money. Probably why they try to extort money from you for the return of the phone.

Change all password even those ‘fingerprint’ protected, just in case. Could be a good time to switch on 2 factor authentication on both your and your daughter’s accounts. They may try to target you.

I’d also check Facebook privacy settings and prevent searching via email address and mobile phone number.

Make sure it’s reported to the police and they are informed of the extortion attempts! They might one day find the group responsible for this extortion.

I am fairly sure with a bit of googling a person has a good chance to link a phone number to a name, plus they can probably read info on the SIM card (not pin protected or pin set to 00000 ?) by putting it into another phone or a “hacker’s setup”. The iPhone itself is pretty secure.

@wyswig here will know I bet

Could be on the SIM card I guess, although I’m not listed in her ICE, just her Mum.

We’ve kept the phone linked to her apple account, so should be no use to anyone. IMEI has supposedly been blocked, although I think they only block it here in the UK.

99.9% certain that the phone was locked, she hadn’t been on it for a good while, so it should have been locked.

Already reported to the police and the serial number recorded, but maybe the could add to that the phone number and what we suspect could be an extortion attempt but we haven’t followed the link so we will never know if that is the actual plan.

Thanks for the suggestion on FB privacy. Will suggest she does that too.

What a nightmare it is when a “simple” bit of tech goes missing!

I would bet they’ve removed the sim card and put it in another phone.

I would also bet your daughter has your number saved as ‘Dad’ either as in the name field or in the nickname field. Did they refer to you by name? Or just your daughter?

I’m not sure where they could of gotten your daughters name from, but it could of been anything from an email notification active on the lockscreen (“Dear <name>,”) to a bit more of an in depth sleuthing. Probably not hard to find.

How did she get it pinched, does she know? Out of her pocket, bag left alone? Just so others can be vigilant.

I’m not sure what they do with stolen phones these days either, but I assume it’s something abroad as IMEI blocking only works in the UK.

Needless to say, do not open their link or download anything from any email address/text/etc

If not from the SIM, I’d be thinking that your contact info has leaked from your service provider to the scammer.

Don’t take your phone into the mosh pit – thief with 53 stolen ‘phones.

Yeah, probably many databases that have your number on it leaked over the years.

LinkedIn was done for example, and they store your number and name.

But linking my daughters stolen phone to me seems to be a bit of a long shot. It’s all a bit weird. Apple assure me 100% that the phone cannot be opened or hacked unless it has been jailbroken, which it hasn’t.
Bearing in mind that the FBI couldn’t hack an iPhone I’m fairly confident that’s true, but it baffles me how they seem to have got the pertinent info and nobody else on her phone has had the suspicious messages, only the number we chose to enter on Find My Iphone as a contact.
Makes my head hurt 😆

@plyphon

Didn’t refer to me.
It’s just an SMS that says “Daughters Name” iPhone has been found. Show location. Then what looks like a file called fmip.ml but on inspection is actually a link.

I’m assuming that if someone plugs the phone into iTunes it would display the phone name even if they couldn’t do anything with it? Since she called the phone “Her name”‘s iPhone then that could answer part of the question. Then they take a punt and text some of the last calls on the SIM card.
Sound plausible?

Looking at fmip.ml – it looks like a simple phishing site designed to mimic “Find My iPhone” to encourage you to enter your Apple ID. (Don’t do that obviously!)

^^^ this

OP you seem to be ignoring the comments above about the SIM card. They have not hacked the phone they have taken the SIM out and read some data from it (probably)

I didn’t think iPhone stored contacts on the SIM.

AFAIK iPhones don’t write any data to the SIM.