4 ms·

I don't think any of them force you to have an Apple ID. There are millions of bricked Apple devices out there though because they are iCloud locked. If someon

I don't think any of them force you to have an Apple ID. There are millions of bricked Apple devices out there though because they are iCloud locked. If someone loses their iPhone or donates it or sells it without removing their Apple ID, then it is literally impossible right now on newer devices to break into them. The parts can't be sold as they all have IDs burned into their ICs that stop them being reused. A friend last year who owned a bar gave me a huge box of lost iPhones for which the owners could not be found/reached. I could only get into one of them. Rest were expensive doorstops.

threeseed 3y ago
Why not just take them to Apple or third party to be recycled. Allowing you to profit from someone’s lost iPhone invites criminal behaviour and potentially allows you to access private information that is still on the phone. No one at a bar asked for that.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  It's more nuanced than that, though. I try to be the most ethical person in the room. I don't want to make a profit from someone else's loss, but the bar owner had tried to find the owners and these were the ones that couldn't be traced. I totally understand the motivation with setting the phones up like this. In theory it should stop theft if there is literally no incentive to steal someone's phone because nothing can be re-used. I just wanted to flash them back to factory and use one of them because I was homeless and needed a phone. I would have happily returned them to Apple for recycling (have you seen their iPhone recycling machine?!), but someone set fire to the building where I'd stored them and so they all went up in flames...