The head of London’s Metropolitan Police has described how the service is working with Apple to tackle iPhone theft.

The partnership includes sharing data with each other to measure the effectiveness of Apple’s anti-theft protections, with significant successes noted to date …

Apple has introduced a succession of measures intended to make iPhones a less attractive target to thieves. These include features like Activation Lock and Stolen Device Protection.

These measures are intended to make iPhones less valuable to thieves by preventing them being reactivated and sold, as well as making it harder for criminals to get access to the personal data stored on the phone and on iCloud.

In parallel, London’s police service has been carrying out a major crackdown on smartphone theft, including aggressive action against thieves who use e-bikes and scooters to snatch unlocked devices from people’s hands on the street. This included a change of policy, allowing “tactical contact” to be used by police cars to knock thieves off their bikes.

BBC News reports that the partnership between the two enables Apple to get real-world feedback on the effectiveness of its protections and to make improvements where needed.

The force revealed on Thursday that it had started sharing data with Apple to build a “global picture” of what happens to stolen handsets, including whether they are being reconnected to a network.

“If stolen phones cannot be reactivated, their value collapses, and so does the incentive to steal them,” Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said.

One problem has been the development of illicit software to factory reset iPhones, bypassing Apple’s protections. Helped by data gleaned from the partnership, Apple has been able to block this software.

Illicit software enables phone snatchers to “factory reset” devices, which means they can be sold as if they are a new device on foreign markets. But now, he said, Apple believes it has “cracked” the engineering problem and data is starting to show that “the vast majority of phones” stolen in recent weeks in the capital were not factory reset.

Rowley says the crime stats demonstrate the difference this has made.

The number of thefts where phones were stolen fell by 14,000 between June 2025 and May 2026 – down 18% on the previous year. In Westminster [the most central area of London], where between 69% and 72% of thefts from the person and personal robberies each week involve phones, there has been a reduction of 45.8% so far this year.

Met Police are also using drones to track thieves on e-bikes.

• Official Apple Store on Amazon
• Discounted AirPods Pro 3
• Wireless CarPlay adapter
• AirTag holders and accessories
• Mac Pro-style Mac mini casing
• NordVPN – privacy-first VPN with no logs and independent audits to verify

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash