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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

OP can return it no questions asked and get another unlocked phone.

It's scummy this happened but I suspect in this case it would be Verizon not telling Apple the truth. Not giving Apple a pass, but if Verizon told the truth that would be newsworthy

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The FCC approved Verizon’s request because they were requesting a very limited lock of 60 days in order to prevent “zero down” device theft and resale by people who manage to hijack or create a Verizon account using stolen credentials and identities, order a phone by mail from whomever, and then never activate it. Verizon provides a statistic of several thousand people last year having their identity stolen and abused to get iPhones, and they must continue to unlock phones (without user action required) at 60 days unless those phones are flagged as acquired through identity fraud (and thus essentially bricked for all carriers, terminating the get rich quick scheme).

https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18759602/verizon-60-day-p...

Hopedully the context helps provide some background for why this might not be as scummy as it seems without that.

Then the fault lies with Apple for marketing it wrongly. They should immediately correct it.

That assumes OP is being completely truthful rather than misrepresenting a scenario that does not match the screenshot shown. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21039563

I don’t assume that, since the above comment indicates they may have doing something fancy with multiple accounts. I would guess that the screenshot is from the process for one of the accounts - but their complaint is from something gone wrong with the other account.

Why sim lock when you could work out a deal with Apple to iCloud lock stolen phones?

Because then the solution applies to phones from app manufacturers, not just iPhones, at the carrier controlled systems rather than at the device manufacturer controlled systems.

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