I got my iPhone 16 Pro stolen from me on an e-bike in London, and it has now reached Shenzhen! Every day, I get the usual threatening messages (texts, not iMessage) on my spare phone asking me to remove the phone from my Find My.
I had an eSIM.
I never displayed my number in Lost Mode.
I didn’t give access to Siri from my lock screen, so they couldn’t “call home.”
When my phone was stolen, I had the SIM blocked by the carrier within a few hours and asked for a replacement physical SIM to use in my spare phone.
How do these people have my phone number? I’m now worried if there has been a data breach.
After the iPhone is reset and in setup mode, if you tap the ‘i’ button, it’ll display the phone’s serial number, IMEI, etc., including the installed SIM’s phone number.
Blocked by the carrier just means it won’t get a signal, so they can’t impersonate you, but the info about the last phone number associated with that SIM is still there.
I’m guessing either through plugging the phone in and having some kind of access to the eSIM, or they reset it and the eSIM was still present but inactive. It would still show all the information (ICCID and phone number) but would be a dead SIM.
I just contacted Apple in the end—they weren’t able to help much with how the thieves got my number but did assure me that without me having shared my password with them, there couldn’t have been any data breach.
