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My wife's iPhone was stolen, and because our iCloud is connected via Family Sharing, I immediately put it on stolen mode and then erase mode to remove all the data once it came online.

I checked several hours later, and it showed that the iPhone had been erased, and currently, the iPhone is still under her iCloud.

My questions are:

  1. Is it secure to keep it linked to her iCloud account? (Is there any risk of the iPhone being linked to her/my account again, and our information being accessed?)
  2. Is it safer to remove it from my iCloud? (Will this allow the thief to reuse the iPhone?)
  3. She has never backed-up her pictures with iCloud. Can she retrieve any of them?
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    leave it on her account. Don't delete it, that's the purpose of why it's set up this way, to make the phone not worth anything. Don't worry they can't get the data.
    – Tyson
    Aug 9, 2015 at 20:14
  • It might be a good idea to change her AppleId password as well.... appleid.apple.com
    – Tyson
    Aug 9, 2015 at 20:15
  • Also don't forget that a stolen iPhone may get discarded by the thief and found by an honest person, who may try to give you every opportunity to locate the iPhone, or may try to contact you, if given the chance. I found such an iPhone, phoned the police and Apple with the serial number (to no avail) and kept it switched on, so it could be located, but all that happened was that it was erased.
    – Redarm
    Dec 16, 2018 at 12:09

1 Answer 1

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  1. It is secure to keep it linked to her iCloud. It will remain Activation Locked, which makes it unusable. The data is not at risk because you've deleted it from the device, remotely. If this had not been done and Lost Mode was activated, you could have located the device.
  2. Removing it from iCloud will, enable the thief to use it.
  3. If there are no backups, iCloud or local, there is no way to retrieve the pictures.
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