Stolen iPhones Will Be Even More Useless from iOS 18 Onwards

https://www.macobserver.com/ios/stolen-iphones-will-be-even-more-useless-from-ios-18-onwards/

by miles • 2 years ago

109 93 2 years ago

This is a good step. Phone snatching is a serious problem. Making stolen phones totally useless is exactly the way to go about it.

If eBikes could have a similar system, that would be great.

coolandsmartrr• 2 years ago

Would be nice for many other expensive items you take outside, like mirror-less cameras.

jasonjayr• 2 years ago

Doesn't this effectively kill 3rd party parts/repairs? Or salvaging dead phones for parts?

Is this gonna make more e-waste, or make repairs more expensive, or both?

krackers• 2 years ago

However, it aligns with Apple’s recent policy changes that allow repairs with genuine used parts while maintaining stringent security measures.

Doesn't this imply that so long as the phone is unliked from apple id, the parts can be re-paired (hah) with a new phone?

beembeem• 2 years ago

If "extending Activation Lock to other components" means what I think it does, then the phone's owner should have control over this and 3rd party repairs should be fine. It may cut out the market for unofficial parts, but does that even exist today? Is anyone making iphone compatible batteries with any scale? (I'm curious if so)

The thrust of this move devalues phones to thieves, which I generally think is a good thing. Cutting down the hardly salvageable value even further should help the "market" sort this out and lead to less theft. I like it.

Kirby643• 2 years ago

Third party parts exist for tons of Apple devices. Usually of varying (typically poor, especially with batteries) quality. You can get OLED screens (actually oled!) that are replacements even. They pretty much will all give you the “unable to validate authentic component” message when paired with an iPhone … but that’s kind of working as intended there.

batch12• 2 years ago

If they use lost or stolen parts, probably.

geor9e• 2 years ago

Why would a 3rd party part show up in a serial number database of stolen phones?

grugagag• 2 years ago

Sadly it won’t work even if you own two broken phones and want to make one out of them. Big loss to repairability and indeed a massive waste of resources. Today I was reading on HN a story on how degrowth won’t do anything for combating global warming. Oh well, this is exactly the opposite of that and it’ll cause a lot of problems for future generations. They’ll look back towards us with disgust and dissapointment.

RobotToaster• 2 years ago

This is probably their real goal here.

Gigachad2• 2 years ago

You can salvage dead phones for parts. You can use the icloud web ui to unlink the phone. If you can't coordinate with the owner to unlink it, it does bring up the question of how you obtained the phone you are stripping for parts.

chongli4• 2 years ago

Some businesses just dump loads of devices into the arms of recyclers without offering any further help. If their IT team isn’t doing a proper Apple-sanctioned MDM-wipe then all those devices may still be activation locked. What can the recycler do with that? Just shred the devices.

Kirby643• 2 years ago

Why would it do either of these things? It would kill the black market for stolen apple parts, but otherwise it shouldn’t impact anything else. Assuming you can “unpair” iCloud on dead phones (which you can do already, to my knowledge), then salvaging isn’t a problem.

throwaway484768• 2 years ago

I have no problem with blacklisting stolen parts. What does concern me is when devices are abandoned or given away, not marked as stolen but still activation locked with no means of getting it unlocked.

Last month I reset my device to reinstall macos and selected log out of icloud and wipe. I assumed this would remove the activation lock but it did not and I had to put my password in. I've found that removing activation lock is an intentionally confusing and misleading process. This only exists to create ewaste and pad the bottom line.

rogerrogerr5• 2 years ago

This only exists to create ewaste and pad the bottom line.

But it obviously reduces the reward for stealing devices, which probably reduces crime? If a thief, given the opportunity to steal my iPhone or an Android phone, takes the Android phone because it’s easier to fence - I’ll gladly give Apple money to be part of that group.

throwaway484768• 2 years ago

I'm not talking about the stolen mode here. Don't strawman me.

kelnos• 2 years ago

But it obviously reduces the reward for stealing devices, which probably reduces crime?

It doesn't reduce crime, it just shifts it to easier targets.

Instead of figuring out why people commit crimes and making society work better to eliminate those reasons, we just shift the burden around and make things objectively worse for everyone.

I get that this is a super hard problem, one that likely can't ever be 100% solved, and Apple isn't responsible for it, but it frustrates me that everything is about controlling symptoms, never about curing the disease.

JumpCrisscross6• 2 years ago

removing activation lock is an intentionally confusing and misleading process

What leads you to conclude intent?

throwaway484768• 2 years ago

Personal experience documented above.

rogerrogerr5• 2 years ago

Exactly. Settings > General > “Transfer or Reset iPhone”. They’re not hiding it.

Happens as part of the flow to erase a phone too, which anyone who knows anything about tech would go through.

diebeforei4852• 2 years ago

Erase all content and settings[1] also disables activation lock. Wiping a hard disk alone is not sufficient because a lot of information is stored elsewhere (eg. biometric fingerprint data).

Activation Lock is only available[2] on Intel Macs with a T2 chip, or Apple Silicon Macs. All of these machines support erase all content and settings.

1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102664 2. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102541

throwaway484768• 2 years ago

Well it didn't because it required my password on reboot.

aeternum• 2 years ago

I've definitely bought a few extra phones that I would not have otherwise due to having them stolen and most people I know are in the same boat.

You'd be surprised how much e-waste theft creates. Often only a few parts can be sold off or reused, much better to prevent the theft.

neumann• 2 years ago

I had a similar issue. Followed all the instructions by Apple on preparing the laptop for a new owner: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102773 and then gave it to the neighbor's kid for their school. It has the whole hello page, but turned out they had to login as me first. The standard part was that the laptop contributed being listed on my devices and I couldn't remove it, UNTIL we logged in once again as me - after a full wipe. I figured either I messed up the process or got stuck in an edge case flow. Either way, it would have been very annoying if the new user wasn't living close and somebody I knew.

carstenhag• 2 years ago

You can also remotely remove the iCloud lock, even without performing 2fa (not exactly sure how it is secured then, but it worked)

wux• 2 years ago

Yeah, I can see why someone might assume that the activation lock would be disabled in that scenario. But on the other hand, I can also see why someone would absolutely expect that it wouldn't be.

I might want (and have wanted) to reinstall macOS and start fresh without any intention of relinquishing or transferring ownership of the physical device. And I might want to log out of iCloud because I don't want to sync my personal stuff on that computer anymore, or because something funky is happening with how messages or photos are syncing and I just want to reset it all. I'd be pretty pissed if, six months after reconfiguring everything, someone nabbed my laptop and I discovered that activation lock had been automatically disabled for me the whole time without my explicitly doing so.

Given these mutually irreconcilable user expectations, I can see why Apple would opt for a design that favors the more cautious approach where you have to press a very specific sequence of buttons to disable the lock. Maybe I'm just selfish, but knowing a laptop I sent away couldn't be repurposed but ended up as e-waste would make me feel a little guilty, but knowing a laptop I didn't want to lose got stolen with all my stuff on it exposed to the thief would make me apoplectic with rage.

GaggiX• 2 years ago

Just remember to never remove the stolen iPhone from Find My, the thieves will try everything to convince you to do so.

Gigachad2• 2 years ago

Apple also fixed this a while back. If your GPS location is away from home, starting a wipe actually sets a timer where you have to Face ID and enter the password in an hour to actually do the wipe.

theultdev• 2 years ago

How do they try to convince you?

Like when they're taking it from you, or do they contact you later somehow?

If it's when they are taking it, why do they try to convince you instead of forcing you since they are already using force to take it?

If it's the latter, how do they contact you if you don't have a phone?

Kirby643• 2 years ago

They contact you later (weeks or months later). And it’s contacting your phone number to attempt to convince you to unlink it, usually with some sob story or threat. They know the phones are worth way way less if they are blacklisted, so they’ll try all sorts of tricks. Apparently it’ll sometimes get sold and passed down to other scammers who try different tactics.

See this article on what that can look like:

https://www.phonearena.com/news/stolen-iphone-scams-how-to-p...

shepherdjerred• 2 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40578460

nerdjon• 2 years ago

I do see a possible downside of being able to re-use parts from a broken iPhone. So parts that were never able to be unlinked while the phone worked.

Unless since it sounds like this is a remote database (and not something stored on the parts themselves) that maybe there could be a way to address this problem but that runs the risk of making a loophole to get around this.

Outside of that, I think doing this is great. Making a stolen device less and less valuable obviously won't stop everyone from stealing iPhones it should cut down on it happening.

I am curious about Apple's incentive to do this outside of just the above. Technically they would get less sales from people replacing their phones, but would also possibly reduce the cost of operating the "theft and loss" iPhone AppleCare+.

MBCook5• 2 years ago

There is a benefit to customers by preventing their very expensive phones from being a popular item to steal.

Even if there hadn’t been stories in the media about how easy it was to steal Kia cars, if people kept having them stolen or knowing friends who had them stolen it would absolute hurt the chance that person would buy a Kia in the future.

Smart to try to avoid that.

kazinator2• 2 years ago

Let's fix something:

prevent the use of parts from stolen, lost or simply discarded and recycled devices

There!

wobfan• 2 years ago

Yeah, I think that too. Apple already had some good theft "protection". They definitely have no money incentive to even strengthen that just because they're so altruistic and want to help the customers. They know that they're killing some more small used-parts market here, even the legitimate part, so they're happily taking it. If it means that they will have some more sales, then they'll do it.

kazinator2• 2 years ago

I suspect that what tech vendors want even more than just sales is if all the old versions of the hardware and software they already sold would just go away.

mikeweiss• 2 years ago

I'd personally like to see phones and their parts be usable at some point again after being reported lost/stolen... Maybe something like 16 months after the fact? That way they have a chance at a second life and not just going to landfill. If a thief knows the phone is useless for more than a year it makes it a much less valuable item.

MBCook5• 2 years ago

iPhones can have a long life as used devices. And some of the parts are very expensive.

Given the cost of holding inventory is low (parts are relatively small) and even if you’re forced to sit on it for years it could still be worth a fair bit, that may bring the problem back.

I think the only reasonable solution to letting parts back in would be to let Apple mark them as ok if given to Apple for free. Apple could remove the blacklist entry and put them back on the secondary market. But because no one paid Apple anything they would be able to be sure that no one was profiting by turning parts around.

Of course Apple would be making money when they sell those parts. So I’m sure there are some people who would really object to this idea.

briandear• 2 years ago

No. It still results in people stealing a bunch of phones and then warehousing them and every 16 months a new batch are ready.

Phone thieves, especially in Europe are the scum of the earth and I’d like to see them destroyed.

A landfill is a choice. You can always send a phone to Apple for recycling. You can drop off at any Apple Store as well.

deepspace• 2 years ago

Ever since Apple started rolling out stolen device protection, whenever I try to access my Apple account, for example under Settings on my iPhone, the accounts gets "locked out". Then I have to jump through all kinds of hoops, including setting a brand-new password, and verifying from another Apple device, to get it unlocked.

I am terrified that this issue, together with the extra protection, is one day going to lock me out of my phone permanently.

ffsm82• 2 years ago

Now imagine Apple bans your account because you forgot to update your payment details and were on holidays at the time, missing the warning.

Now you're not only stranded without your data, no, all your devices are ewaste too

I can see the charm, totally.

Matheus28• 2 years ago

Luckily Apple is not Google, and you can call their support and they can tell you what the problem is and likely fix it.

musicale• 2 years ago

And non-stolen iPhones. /s ;-)

your_drunk_dad• 2 years ago

Non-stolen can be unlocked in Find My.

lofaszvanitt• 2 years ago

Is this such a widespread problem that warrants this excessive action? I just don't buy the statistics about phone theft found online.

MaxikCZ2• 2 years ago

You dont buy the online statistics, so you ask online randoms?

ivm• 2 years ago

Yes, it’s terrible in Latin America. For example, in many areas of Santiago, Chile, you can’t take your phone out on the street without risking snatching.

ivolimmen2• 2 years ago

Don't think they are doing it for you. This improves their bottom line.

MaxikCZ2• 2 years ago

What if improving their bottomline can have positive effect on my experience? What if Apple intentionally pursues such paths, and disregards paths that improve their bottom line without improving user experience?

Or is blind hate just that much popular?

ivolimmen2• 2 years ago

This will only amount to more electronic waste if they do not allow to unlock it for reuse. Technically possible but not allowed because of procedure everything will go the a landfill.

mensetmanusman• 2 years ago

As long as there is no incentive for Apple to use this feature to prevent legit recycling, that would be great.

For example, if someone sells an old device, after someone repairs a device with the sold/old component, there should be a 30-60 day grace period where the original owner is required to actively prevent the repair if the part was stolen. Otherwise it would automatically be allowed to be used.

d13• 2 years ago

If a thief grabs a phone from someone’s hand while authenticated, can’t they then just make it theirs by immediately resetting the password pin and Face ID?

valianteffort• 2 years ago

No you need to enter the password to change it

NoNoisle• 2 years ago

This is what stolen device protection is for

ThePowerOfFuet• 2 years ago

@dang Let's maybe replace the URL with the original source, buried in a tiny link at the end?

https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/12/apple-activation-lock-iphone-...

Stolen iPhones Will Be Even More Useless from iOS 18 Onwards

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