Yeah, there's a reasonably visible message "warning" you of this, which has a prompt to turn it off.
I actually thought this was very old, added a year or so ago. I guess it got delayed?
I've had two phones stolen (right out of my hands) that were immediately shut down and sim cards ejected to prevent them from being tracked. While I'm sure this feature wouldn't help me get back a phone, I hope it does deter this.
And they may, but the effort to steal an iPhone has been increased with this, and the difficulty in recovering a lost (not necessarily stolen) iPhone has been decreased. It's a win for the typical consumer.
Yeah I'm baffled by all of the comments saying that this is great as an anti-theft feature. I don't know where people live that that's the case, but I sure as heck have never known police in the US to give a damn about $1000 property crimes. They don't care about $20000 home robberies and car thefts, even with strong video or other evidence. I can't imagine they're going to start chasing down criminals to get a used phone back unless it's for the mayor's kid or something.
I was visiting a friend in Switzerland a few years ago, and her bag got stolen right off the back of her chair while we were in a restaurant. (The guy was quick and sneaky; by the time I ran out to the street, he was gone.)
The restaurant manager called the police, and over the next 15 minutes we learned that the thief went on to try to rob the wrong person at another restaurant a couple blocks away. The intended victim held the guy down until the police arrived. The restaurant manager led us over to the other restaurant.
The police managed to recover nearly everything that was stolen, by going through the guy's pockets, and also doing a search in a nearby alleyway, where he had dumped my friend's bag and some of the less-concealable items he'd stolen from people. One thing (can't remember what) was still missing from my friend's bag, and the police took down information about it and told her who to contact to follow up in case it was found.
It was easily the best experience I've ever had with police anywhere (I live in the US but travel fairly frequently). I wish all police could be like that. (Granted, this was just a single experience with two specific officers; who knows if the rest in their precinct or even country are on average that good. But it was definitely encouraging.)
I recount this to suggest that in places with police that don't suck, maybe this sort of thing could actually be a decent anti-theft feature. But agreed that police in the US don't care. I was once mugged and had $3000 worth of stuff stolen from me (laptop and two phones), and the police clearly filed my report to /dev/null. Another friend of mine had her iPad stolen once, and she ended up tracking it down on her own (not the safest thing she's done) because the police told here there was "nothing they could do" even though she showed them the tracking information.
This actually reminded me of a couple positive experiences I had with police in Mexico. They weren't sitatuations where I'd been robbed so not totally analagous, but twice I dealt with officers that were very thoughtful and helpful.
Living in the US has probably skewed my impressions of police generally.
Wasn't my experience in Chicago. I was robbed (of my phone, at $12) and had my phone back within 15 minutes, including the time it took to call the police.
Your experience is not a pan-european thing by the way. Get your bag/wallet robbed in Barcelona and the police will just roll their eyes at you and give you a report for your insurance.
In my country, I've seen a person enter a police station asking for his phone, which he knew to be there because of a finder feature (not sure if it was Find my Phone in an iPhone specifically). The police must had taken the phone from someone who was caught stealing in a different incident or something.
I've had an iPhone stolen twice (both times it was my wife's actually). And both times I've recovered it using Find My. Honestly, it didn't even occur to me to involve the police. I just fired up the Find My app as soon as she told me the phone was missing, and I hunted it down. Confrontations ensued on both occasions, but nothing too serious.
I often see people here referring to their country without mentioning the actual country, i.e. they hide the interesting detail, which I find weird. Why not to write "in Iceland..." instead? Or is it a privacy thing or just some kind of modesty?
And here in America, I got literally laughed at by my small-town police force as a teenager when I went to them with the exact house my stolen bike was sitting outside of.
The Dutch police want to avoid that civilians 'play their own judge'. If the perpetrator and/or stolen object can be positively ID'ed this is a big plus for the public prosecutor to give a go ahead. What can happen then, is that the police try to buy the stolen good, catching the perpetrator red handed. This is the most effective path of getting a case succesfully put to trial. However, it is going to differ per local jurisdiction. Some Dutch police do have man power issues as well, just like some of USA has.
On a side note: I don't like the attitude of laughing at civilians/victims who the police officer is supposed to serve. Its a kind of negative attitude which devalues the victims interest (I don't like the word toxic but others would apply it here), eventually harming trust in police in the process which (long term) benefits criminals. And what I also don't like is when such is generalized on all police, all around the world.
Police in the US don't investigate any but very expensive property crime against individuals, either. And I don't actually know that they investigate very expensive property crime—I just assume they do. Certainly mid-five-figures of theft from multiple locations by one crew with tons of video evidence isn't enough to get them interested, beyond taking the report.
... unless your country is the US, in which case, yeah, true.
Yeah, I'm sure the police wouldn't check either. I'm sure it wouldn't help me get my phone back but (perhaps paradoxically?) I hope it at least is a bit of a deterrent.
I actually thought this was very old, added a year or so ago. I guess it got delayed?
I've had two phones stolen (right out of my hands) that were immediately shut down and sim cards ejected to prevent them from being tracked. While I'm sure this feature wouldn't help me get back a phone, I hope it does deter this.
Edit: I think this was announced back in 2019 WWWDC https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluet... ?