[trodat14]

I wonder if Tim could get my stolen Apple ID back? A thief took my phone after watching me enter my passcode, so they were able to change the “trusted phone number” and lock me out. There’s a new feature in iOS 17.3 to prevent this but it wasn’t available at the time.

Several calls to Apple Support explaining the situation and offering to provide any form of identification they’d like hasn’t helped; their policy is that the phone number is the key piece to verify your identity, even more so than the email for the Apple ID.

I lost a couple hundred in purchased apps, but losing years’ of photos was the worst. I had apparently selected an option to keep the full-res images in iCloud, so my backups only contained thumbnails. Lots of lessons learned, but such a frustrating experience.