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Comment by baicunko | Hacker News Reader

This took quite a while to get ready but I do believe it prevents 99.9% of the theft cases mentioned. I am downloading it right now.

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> I do believe it prevents 99.9% of the theft cases mentioned

I don't believe so, or at least where I am from. This 'only' provides additional protection against cases where thieves know your device passcode. I've had my phone stolen from me twice where they couldn't have known my passcode and couldn't remove it from Find My, and it was never seen again.

They probably stripped the phone down for parts. But there is another theft case where they hold a knife/gun to you and tell you to hand over the password/wipe the phone. Which this update solves.

The other issue could probably be resolved with more aggressive part ID checking. iPhones should just refuse to function if they have a part from a stolen phone.

Even if it prevents reselling the phone, it doesn't prevent the phone from being stolen. It would be a dumb criminal to leave you your phone to allow you to immediately call the police if you've been mugged. Just take the phone, trash it literally placing it in a bin or destroying it or both.

At the end of the day, you still don't have the phone whether the thief profits from it or not. All this will do is prevent criminals up to date with this info to not try to resell it. It does not prevent them from taking/destroying it.

This feature is not really about protecting your device from being stolen. It's about protecting your iCloud account and everything on your device from being compromised when somebody has stolen your device and also has your phone's passcode.

It's an attempt to resolve the fairly widespread iPhone / iCloud social engineering takeover attacks that were documented in great detail by Joanna Stern last year:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-iphone-security-theft-pas...

https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-techn...

> This feature is not really about protecting your device from being stolen.

Once a thief has stolen his 10th iPhone that he can't do anything with, he'll probably be less likely to bother stealing iPhones. If anything it's a liability since it can be tracked as long as it still has some battery.

> Once a thief has stolen his 10th iPhone that he can't do anything with, he'll probably be less likely to bother stealing iPhones. If anything it's a liability since it can be tracked as long as it still has some battery.

Theft isn't just for the whole device, it's also for parts. By making the part market so difficult they essentially create a black market for it in third world countries where just the phone's battery could be worth a day's wages.

That’s why they require that you activate parts as well. Motherboard, screen and face id sensors are useless. The battery isn’t worth much, compared to newer Chinese knockoffs

The screen is still usable no? It just disables true tone IIRC.

A day's wage in Colombia is about $10-15 and people tend to preference and pay more for original parts since the cost of the device is too high to risk. An iPhone X costs close to a month's salary. They even tend to avoid third party cables or chargers as a consequence.

You have a lot of faith in the learning curve of a thief. In my area, the ATT fiber lines have been cut multiple times in the same area multiple times directly impacting my my friend's service. These have been due to the lines getting cut searching for copper. They still haven't learned and it keeps happening.

This is assuming that the thief can tell which phone brand/model it is at the time of theft.

For phones which are in a case/cover, inside bags etc., it seems almost impossible so am unsure that this is an effective deterrent.

But it kind of does in a statistical measure.

If you think in the systems of how criminals work, they tend to spend more time stealing things they think will pay off. Taking something that will cost them time and not gain them money will over time bias thieves to not taking iphones.

For example it may prevent this

a) iphone is left on a table in the open.

but would not prevent

b) iphone is in a bag, bag gets stolen.

This would discourage thieves from targeting iPhones long term so there is a definite network benefit.

You can't really prevent "I stole your phone just to cause chaos". What Apple did with Find My was to remove the financial incentive to steal phones. What Apple does with this is protecting your iCloud account from someone who knows your passcode. (I would imagine that most people in relationships know their partner's passcode. Sometimes relationships sour.)

What prevents "I stole your phone just to cause chaos" is the risk/reward profile. Even though your phone is useless to someone that stole it, it's still theft, and you'll still have to face consequences if caught. If the incentive is "I'll be able to buy $1200 worth of shit", then people are probably going to take their chances with getting caught. If it's "I'll get nothing except the satisfaction of smashing someone else's electronics", then most people won't take their chances.

With the whole "knowing your passcode doesn't help" situation, it makes the long tail crimes even more difficult. "Tell me your passcode or I'll shoot you" no longer works, for example. It makes the crime significantly more difficult to commit, and requires committing crimes that carry significantly longer sentences. (Armed robbery turns into kidnapping. You could be looking at the rest of your life in prison for $300 in someone's checking account. Not worth it to most people.)

At the end of the day, there is only so much you can do. The rest is your insurance company's problem. The fewer viable attacks there are against you, and the less often they happen, the less your premiums are. (I actually don't know if there is insurance for this. I should check.)

The point of it is to protect your data, not the phone itself.

An interesting scenario I heard was a fellow in, I think, Colombia. He was visiting, and was looking at his phone on the sidewalk. As he was looking at it, a pair of people rode up on a motorcycle or scooter, grabbed it out of his hand, and drove off.

They just got themselves an unlocked phone.

I assume this protects, somewhat, against this by the fact that were the thieves to try and change anything, there's another step of verification necessary than there was before.

And I think it was very clever of Apple to leverage the device location as an ad hoc "2FA". "Something you know, some place you are."

Thieves have been known to steal iPhones not just for the value of the parts but to compromise your entire digital existence. Most online banking transfers only require a 2nd factor from your phone (your saved passwords are already on there).

Why would a criminal steal your phone if they knew they couldn't sell it?

They can still part it out, e.g. at least the screen and frame.

With that said, this will definitely make it more difficult and less profitable per unit of effort.

Edit: @google234123 +1 to that!

Soon I hope apple with blacklist electronic parts from stolen devices based on their serial numbers

you mean beside the specific examples of why i provided in the comment you replied to?

> At the end of the day, you still don't have the phone whether the thief profits from it or not.

I care a lot about some low life scumbag not profiting from it. Anything that discourages theft is great.

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