Apple teams up with London police to crack down on iPhone theft

iPhone theft in London has fallen by 18% in a year, and the Met Police say a data-sharing partnership with Apple is a significant reason why after the two organisations worked together to close one of the most exploited loopholes in smartphone theft.

The Metropolitan Police and Apple have been sharing real-world data to build what officers describe as a "global picture" of what happens to stolen handsets, including whether devices are being reconnected to mobile networks after theft.

The arrangement gives Apple ground-level feedback on the effectiveness of features like Activation Lock and Stolen Device Protection, allowing the company to identify and respond to workarounds as they emerge in the wild.

One of the biggest gaps in Apple's anti-theft architecture had been illicit third-party software capable of factory resetting stolen iPhones, effectively wiping them clean for resale on foreign markets as if new.

Using intelligence from the Met partnership, Apple identified and blocked that software. Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said Apple now believes it has "cracked" the engineering problem and that data from recent weeks shows the vast majority of phones stolen in London were not successfully factory reset.

"If stolen phones cannot be reactivated, their value collapses, and so does the incentive to steal them," Rowley said.

From June 2025 through May 2026, there were 14,000 fewer thefts involving phones, representing an 18% fall year-on-year. The effects can be felt more clearly in Westminster, which is the city's central borough, because phones make up 69 to 72% of all personal thefts per week.

The rate of phone theft in Westminster has dropped by 45.8% this year. In addition, the Metropolitan Police Service has been putting more pressure on the thieves by using drones to monitor gangs taking e-bikes as well as instructing their cars to push off thieves riding motorcycles.