iPhones for a long time now have had something called Activation Lock. What that does is it basically locks the phone so that if the phone gets stolen, it cannot be sold and reactivated. That’s led to two things. One is scams such as this one, or this one that are meant to get you to remove activation lock so that the thief can resell your phone. The second thing are phones being dismantled for their parts since individual parts aren’t affected by activation lock.
Apple is going solve the latter problem, or at least try to. And to their credit, they did announce this months ago. Though that announcement did fly under the radar at the time:
Apple will also extend its popular Activation Lock feature to iPhone parts in order to deter stolen iPhones from being disassembled for parts. Requested by customers and law enforcement officials, the feature was designed to limit iPhone theft by blocking a lost or stolen iPhone from being reactivated. If a device under repair detects that a supported part was obtained from another device with Activation Lock or Lost Mode enabled, calibration capabilities for that part will be restricted.
Enter BetaProfiles who noted that the RC (Release Candidate) of iOS 18 had this feature enabled. Thus everybody who updates their iPhone to iOS 18 will get this feature. And in the process, make their phones less valuable to thieves. I suspect that there will be a further increase in scams as thieves who want to cash in on stealing iPhones will try to go that route to cash in on their ill gotten gains. But any deterrent to stop phone thefts is a good thing.
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This entry was posted on September 15, 2024 at 9:25 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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With iOS 18, Thieves Who Want To Steal Your iPhone Might As Well Not Even Bother
iPhones for a long time now have had something called Activation Lock. What that does is it basically locks the phone so that if the phone gets stolen, it cannot be sold and reactivated. That’s led to two things. One is scams such as this one, or this one that are meant to get you to remove activation lock so that the thief can resell your phone. The second thing are phones being dismantled for their parts since individual parts aren’t affected by activation lock.
Apple is going solve the latter problem, or at least try to. And to their credit, they did announce this months ago. Though that announcement did fly under the radar at the time:
Apple will also extend its popular Activation Lock feature to iPhone parts in order to deter stolen iPhones from being disassembled for parts. Requested by customers and law enforcement officials, the feature was designed to limit iPhone theft by blocking a lost or stolen iPhone from being reactivated. If a device under repair detects that a supported part was obtained from another device with Activation Lock or Lost Mode enabled, calibration capabilities for that part will be restricted.
Enter BetaProfiles who noted that the RC (Release Candidate) of iOS 18 had this feature enabled. Thus everybody who updates their iPhone to iOS 18 will get this feature. And in the process, make their phones less valuable to thieves. I suspect that there will be a further increase in scams as thieves who want to cash in on stealing iPhones will try to go that route to cash in on their ill gotten gains. But any deterrent to stop phone thefts is a good thing.
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This entry was posted on September 15, 2024 at 9:25 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.