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Comment by onphonenow | Hacker News Reader

The reduction in iPhone theft after activation lock was remarkable in the Bay Area. Did the person writing the article confirm none of these were stolen?

Owners can now remove devices via web site I think. So if folks are saying these are just broken, have owner turn off activation lock

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Typical clickbait title, my main takeaway was; this security actually works that well? Sign me up.

Give the original owner 30 days and if no response unlock it and let the thieves win? Uh, no I don't think so. It's not a far stretch to think everything got stolen and the owner is now locked out of their complete digital life.

> the owner is now locked out of their complete digital life.

Everything what? Do laptop theves also usually steal your sticky note with password?

Losing a phone is more serious than a laptop for most people in a world of enforced 2fa.

And it really isn't that far fetched that both your phone and laptop got stolen. Maybe they were in the same bag etc.

> Owners can now remove devices via web site I think. So if folks are saying these are just broken, have owner turn off activation lock

For this to work and for the device to _see_ that it has been removed from an account requires that even in it's locked that it must be able to start up and allow the person with physical access to at least configure some network details right?

> Owners can now remove devices via web site I think. So if folks are saying these are just broken, have owner turn off activation lock

I expect that some means to "phone home" is required. I just had to spend an hour on the phone with Asurion to avoid a $300 fee for returning an iPhone for warranty replacement where the Activation Lock wouldn't turn off despite removing the device via the web site.

I don’t think asurion spends the time to do the reset flow if the lock is showing as on. In most cases users don’t turn off lock after the fact. I thought reset flow was needed to get network connectivity back which is needed to check lock status.

I think you used to be able to run stolen phones back through insurance claims as broken but I think that has stopped being possible as they take a harder line.

On my call, the rep put me on hold for a few minutes and came back saying that they could verify I'd removed the device, even though the activation screen was showing. It may have also just them giving me a freebie since I've been paying them for well over a decade.

I'm not saying they can't figure it out, but there is a lot of repair flow stuff that may not do that because if the person didn't unlock before mailing not that many will unlock after mailing? Or even know how to?

Yes, but this makes perfect sense as activation lock only comes into play when the device is working. So when you go to reset the device it checks activation lock during install.

Find My relies on BLE and other devices in that mesh network to transmit location (and “make sound” requests) in case the device is offline/soft-off, maybe Activation Lock has a similar implementation? Find My just hangs onto a cryptographic proof to disable Activation Lock and other devices around it deliver it in case there’s no internet connectivity.

There's a lot of evidence to support this but it's not without problems.

Now a common scam is for someone to sell an iPhone and then report it stolen, getting a new one on insurance and pocketing the sale.

This is still an overall better situation of course.

Apple is explicit about making sure lock is off when buying - and at least apple won’t pay out on an unlocked phone reported “stolen”. But yes - the scams migrate.

Stolen product still had some value via bogus warranty claims because that process didn’t always cross check lock status because item was “broken” or wouldn’t turn on and apple doesn’t always put serial number externally visible. If person fixed laptop they’d find it was locked. All that has tightened up I think?

I nevertheless had my M2 MacBook stolen on BART in San Francisco last month. This wouldn't have happened if it were universally understood that stolen MacBooks are worthless. My interaction went smoothly, but this could have gone badly.

If all buyers checked that the activation lock was disabled before sale, we wouldn't be having this discussion. I prefer the reduction in crime that activation lock promises.

and in a decade? What if apple no longer maintains this system? Will all these m-series macs be bricks if they change hands for free or are legitimately recycled?

If you were around when phone theft was a thing on BART and Muni you'd never sit near a door again :) It was comical how bad it was and how little the govt did about it other than demand apple fix the issue. Would have been trivial to have an undercover cop on their phone near a door all day - they'd have caught tons of criminals.

That said, at least for phones activation lock was game changing. Not sure about laptops, maybe they can't ID them or fewer activate lock or there is a way to use them in a claim scam (ie, damage and "return" laptops while reselling the real one?)

From other comments, it appears that this is not the case in London. But it appears that stolen iPhones in that city get shipped to China in large enough scale that someone is making a profit.

On Apple website, remove devices is not the same as remove deactivation lock.

Yes it is. Erasing & removing it from Find My on the website[1] removes activation lock.

1: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201351

Feh, and if I choose not to use My Find, how does that help me?

That's the most complex set of steps to disowning the Apple.

Then your devices still appear in the Find My app but have no location data associated.

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