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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

Blocking via EMEI should be routine as soon as reported stolen to police and network.

In fact, I think this is why organised operations quickly ship stolen phones abroad: the EMEI may be blocked and tracked in UK/EU but it won't be in China...

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Blocking the IMEI presumably greatly reduces the value of the stolen phone, at least.

UAE China Russia India and almost all of Africa are not in GSMA blacklist program which means the phones still work there (and iPhones sell for a premium in some of those places as well). Find my iPhone lock is very effective in making it less profitable unless they are able to phish the password out of you.

One also wonders where all the cheap "refurbished" phones come from on eBay.

Are they actually legit (assuming a big seller, not a 20-star account), or are they "laundered" stolen phones?

A lot of them have Chinese ROMs, are they the reverse: stolen in China and sold abroad? Or just arbitrage of regional pricing?

One note with WiFi only Apple equipment (mainly iPads here); there are ways to use diagnostic cables and software to 'rewrite' the device serial numbers to 'bypass' activation lock.

It requires a 'clean' serial, WiFi MAC, and Bluetooth MAC, the three things a WiFi only device uses to authenticate to Apple during setup.

iPhones and other cellular connected devices? Nah, not gonna happen, though there are weird jailbreak-esque 'bypasses' that will get the phone past setup, albeit still 'locked' when you reset.

I'm sure ebay has their fair share of stolen goods. A lot of what you see sold as refurbished are returns and trade-ins. When you return an item for example, to Amazon, they don't restock it. Instead they throw it in a bin and auction it off by the pallet to second hand resellers.

I wonder why the Chinese government doesn't force carriers to block stolen EMEIs.

I don't know if they do, but that's not the point. The point is I'm reasonably sure that there isn't a global database of stolen phones.

There is and it is called the GSMA blacklist but as you would expect none of the countries these phones end up in participate in that database.

Why would they? This is just one of the many ways they take advantage of everyone else. Most phone snatchings aren’t happening in China so this is an easy way to reduce their import bill for phones.

The final destination is unlikely China. Usually these phones are then transported to Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong or Guangzhou and from there flown back in a suitcase to various countries in Africa.

https://www.ft.com/content/4609e212-eb64-11dd-bb6e-0000779fd...

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