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Honestly. This is a pretty good advertisement for Apple. I appreciate the effort that they've put into making my device less valuable to thiefs.
by bnchrch 2y ago
Honestly. This is a pretty good advertisement for Apple.
I appreciate the effort that they've put into making my device less valuable to thiefs.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoThese days, it's not worth it to steal an iPhone. It's a useless brick. That Apple knows where it's at.
- kernal 2y agoI disagree. There are a lot of uses for an iCloud locked iPhone, such as a music player, podcast player, security camera, etc. Edit: I should clarify that the embedded video clearly showed that a number of the iPhones she had were still able to be used. Perhaps the owner didn't or wasn't able to iCloud lock them, but that's what I originally meant.
- ms7m 2y agoNo, if an iPhone is iCloud locked, you're not able to use the phone unless you enter the password of the account.
- notatoad 2y ago>if an iPhone is iCloud locked but that still leaves the possibility that it isn't locked, and therefore it is worth it for theives to steal it. Even just the chance that it's not locked would make it worth stealing.
- hifromwork 2y agoYes, but your response doesn't make sense in context. GP specifically said that there are a lot of uses "for an iCloud locked iPhone", parent debunked it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- chuckadams 2y agoNone of these work when the device is marked as lost/stolen.
- acchow 2y agoThis isn’t true. The iPhone is locked down over iCloud. I assume remote lockdown also works while the phone is turned off or on airplane mode (as Find My Phone does by using the passive Apple mesh network)
- gruez 2y ago>I assume remote lockdown also works while the phone is turned off or on airplane mode (as Find My Phone does by using the passive Apple mesh network) It doesn't need to be. If you have a passcode, the phone can't be used unless the correct passcode is entered. If you try to factory reset it, you can't get past the setup wizard if find my iphone was enabled for the phone prior to the wipe. Note this doesn't require that the phone receive notification that the phone has been marked stolen. So the only way you can use the phone is if find my iphone wasn't set up prior to it being lost.
- makeworld 2y agoClearly this isn't true, as her phone got stolen.
- koito17 2y agoYup. I assume there is plenty of value to be found selling donor boards and other parts of the iPhone. Not saying it's a repair shop's fault if they end up with motherboards of a stolen phone, but if I were a thief dealing with an activation-locked phone, my first idea would be a jailbreak, and if that fails, then disassemble the phone and sell the parts. Presumably thieves already do these things (and more sophisticated things) to extract value out of stolen iPhones.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoYou really have to be careful with third-party iPhone repairs, especially in China. I had my phone repaired once, and when I got it back...it kind of worked, but they swapped out another part for something that was broken to ensure repeat business. That was in the iPhone 1 days though.
- nebula8804 2y agoIts been about 17 years since the iPhone 1 days...
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoYes, I'm old. This was in 2009 I think (I bought it in 2007). The e-markets are a lot different now (you can still find obscure shady offices repairing older hardware), and iPhone repairers that were scamming people are probably long gone.
- nebula8804 2y agoWhat is on the board that can be used? Obviously the SOC is out. Maybe just the RAM or Flash? Is there really anything else?
- 2y ago
- whimsicalism 2y agoi see homeless people in SF disassembling iphones so clearly they have routed around this
- throwaway7ahgb 2y agoSeriously? There has to be a story here. You're saying they sit on the street with multiple phones, like a repair shop?
- whimsicalism 2y agoyep, although i've only seen this once (at the intersection of oak & baker). it surprised my economic intuition as i would expect them to be pawning off the whole phone and then someone later on in the supply chain doing the disassembly
- acchow 2y agoIt gets stripped down for parts. Many of the individual components are valuable
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoThe higher value parts are locked down also. I wonder if that includes the screen or not? Is it possible to lock down an iPhone screen these days, or can you use it as a replacement for another iphone whose screen is busted?
- qingcharles 2y agoThe screens have been locked for a few years now. If you replace it you have to call an Apple hotline to get the new screen relinked to the mobo.
- knodi123 2y ago> It's a useless brick Unless the owner falls for one of these texts, right? Isn't that the entire point of the linked article?
- arp242 2y agoYes exactly; they must have a non-zero success rate. Few years back my friend's iPhone got stolen, and it was more or less the same kind of stuff.
- XajniN 2y agoDon’t expect reasonable behavior from a phone snatcher.
- fennecbutt 2y agoThen are so many iPhones stolen every day? They're not just being thrown in the bin
- projectazorian 2y agoWhere I live thieves now demand your passcode and iCloud password at gunpoint, along with the phone.
- r0m4n0 2y agoIt’s interesting though… it’s still worth something to thieves, they still can recycle the screen, buttons, case etc. I’ve had my iPhone stolen in recent years too, people can’t resist. Don’t get me wrong, it does feel good to stick it to the perp but doesn’t apple itself have the most to gain from locking most of the value away? The second hand market is completely gated by them. Broken FaceID? You need a new phone… This is a win win for Apple
- sosodev 2y agoAren’t most of the parts tied to the motherboard?
- nebula8804 2y agoEach generation seems to add an additional part. I know they serialize Face ID module, maybe the screen, the battery gives an indicator in the settings menu that its not OEM but it still works. I doubt the case or volume buttons are tied to the phone but what else is left? The Antenna or USB-C port?
- qingcharles 2y agoScreen is locked. If you do your own replacement you have to call Apple to get it relinked to the mobo.
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- qbxk 2y agowell duh, the most valuable company in the world isn't going do something that isn't profitable for them, but in this case their interests align with their customers in a powerful way. what would be really great is if we could engineer systems to develop alignments between relationships like that all the time, but hey, we live in an imperfect world
- prmoustache 2y agoNot so much if it allows the thief to cet contact info of the original owner.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lgats 2y agothe SIM card will have this information, also if you put your phone in lost mode, it gives you the option to display a contact number
- MyFedora 2y agoNo, they sell the parts if they can't get the phone unlocked. Even if the phone would be a worthless brick, a stolen phone is a phone that the owner will never get back. Fresh e-waste, straight into the landfill I guess. Is this sarcasm?
- Cerium 2y agoNobody risks stealing individual bricks from people's front yards. The risk exceeds the reward. The end goal here is to make the phone so useless that nobody even tries to steal it.
- MyFedora 2y agoNo, this is a side effect of Apple striving to design the world's most unrepairable devices, or more accurately, earn more money with overpriced repairs by creating an artifical monopoly on Apple device repairs using part pairing. Why else would there be no option to pair parts for repairs if you can prove that you are the owner of the device?
- Dylan16807 2y agoThey often use security as an excuse to be anti-repair. That doesn't mean they're lying any time they mention security. Many of the things they do really are to benefit the customer. One of those is having strong locks on stolen phones.
- teeray 2y agoSecurity is often a cloak for anti-consumer measures for companies. For another example, Netflix and friends have adopted the “we noticed suspicious activity on your account” phraseology to dress up their password sharing crackdown as something consumers want.
- iknowstuff 2y agoI know this is a hot take but hear me out. I think it makes sense these days for Apple to make phones without much care for repairability. Labor is too expensive to bother with spending hours on repairing a phone. Cheaper to produce new one. The problem with that is the environmental impact of disposable electronics, but Apple is leading the way and using recycled materials, avoiding plastic, becoming carbon neutral etc. I think this is the direction the industry is generally going to move towards. It makes sense and stops being a problem when the entire product is recyclable and/or uses recycled material in the first place. They’ve been touting their advancements pretty loudly, but I don’t think it’s getting picked up by journalists.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoApple puts effort into making you go to them for repair parts. Any deterrence against thieves is simply a fringe benefit. Don't credit them for something that isn't actually their goal.
- sethherr 2y agoI think it is pretty clearly a goal - when you create marketing campaigns around an aspect of your product (and Apple has around this sort of security), delivering on your promises is clearly a goal. I wouldn’t be surprised if the original impetus for this variety of security was a prompt like “what are some objectives that support us creating vendor lock in” - that’s how organizations end up with multiple interconnected objectives
- account42 2y agoThe purpose of marketing is to bend the truth to something that is going to attract customers. It doesn't have anything to do with the actual goals of the company.
- icehawk 2y agoDeterrence against thieves is a pretty big benefit. Meanwhile there's massive amount of low-quality parts i have to wade through when wanting to order a replacement battery.
- dogbait 2y agoWhen buying my child her first iPhone we went through so many used devices at the local phone store which had all been refurbished or repaired using sub standard 3rd party screens. Being able to see Apple’s warning on the iPhone 11 and up "Unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple display” meant we were able to find a phone which was still stock. I’m a big proponent of the right to repair but in this case Apple’s repair deterrence feature had a big benefit for us.
- giomasce 2y agoNot enough, apparently. She still got robbed of her iPhone and had to buy another one.
- tim333 2y agoI would like it if you could have your stolen phone chat to the police and report its location so they could go arrest the thieves. There doesn't seem much enthusiasm in law enforcement for enforcing those laws though. There was an interesting approach with VanMoof bikes where the company insured it against theft, and if your £2000 bike disappeared they actually had a team that would go to it's location and ask for it back. The police don't seem that interested in getting stolen stuff though - that was private enterprise. Still I'd pay for that on a phone if only to get the bastards who snatch the things.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fennecbutt 2y agoOr plenty of android brands too. After a hard reset my phone requires that a Samsung or Google account that was previously signed in on the phone be used to gain access. Kind of annoying cause I used a temp account on a Samsung tablet and now I can't get access to it after a reset unless I take it to Samsung with proof of purchase and id.