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>These chop-shop buyers aren't (nearly as) interested in iPhones When an IMEI is reported stolen carriers blacklist it. Either way you have to swap the IMEI, s

• derefr 3y ago
  The interesting thing is that most phones aren't reported as stolen (i.e. the device's lost/stolen mode is never activated through the device's cloud service binding), because most people don't realize that that's a thing they can do. The difference in ratios between the Android and iOS ecosystems, of phones stolen-and-resold-locally and therefore "recoverable", to phones stolen-and-then-"trafficked" and so unrecoverable, comes down to a deterrent effect from how completely iOS's lost mode stops part reuse. By having the 20%-or-so of phones that are marked as lost/stolen, become effectively entirely dead weight with no reusable parts, the margin for the whole logistics pipeline (steal, ship, take apart) for this type of phone drops negative.
  • trimethylpurine 3y ago
    Interesting. Are you citing actual statistics here or is this a theory that seems plausible to you? If it's the latter, I should point out that it's relying heavily on an assumption about how often specific models of phones are actually stolen, reported stolen, and/or recovered and I think those numbers are extremely difficult to come by in any realistically useful sense. That said, even with statistics on hand, this is a reach. You might be right, but it's highly unlikely and impossible to prove in any useful application.