Ask HN: Can My Former Employer Control My MacBook After I Bought It from Them? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can My Former Employer Control My MacBook After I Bought It from Them?

1 pointmococa7 comments

Some time ago, I worked for a company that, on my first day, asked me to buy a MacBook. I did, and they reimbursed me, but they requested information like the serial number and other details, which I provided since the MacBook was theirs. After some time, I left the company, and they offered me the option to keep the MacBook for 50% of its price, which I thought was a good deal and accepted.

However, I have a concern. Since they have those details, is there any way they could control (reset/remove the Apple ID) of the MacBook?

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Apple Automated Deployment - which allows an employer to automatically install and use a Mobile Device Management profile to automatically monitor and control a MacBook even if it was shipped directly to a staff member - almost always requires the business to purchase the laptop itself through either an Apple Store business account or a certified reseller.

If you personally purchased the laptop via retail channels, any software they could have installed to control or monitor the laptop would not survive a factory reset.

If somehow the laptop was permanently associated via Automated Deployment with an MDM profile and you did a factory reset, you would get a popup during setup with the name of the company indicating that they would have the ability to control the laptop. You could ask them to remove the laptop from their Apple Business account and/or MDM solution and reset again.

I think that's not the case, they never asked me to install anything, and after leaving the company, I did a factory reset. Thank you!

No, not unless they installed special software (if so, just do a factory restore! That's why there is a hidden partition!)

The serial number was for the warranty and in case it got stolen (you did get a receipt from them right?)

It makes sense and I think that was the case. They never asked me to install any software and I did a factory reset. Thank you.

MDM profiles are installed remotely and cannot be removed simply by doing a factory reset.

MissTake makes a good point regarding MDM. Google around to learn more. I found this stackexchange entry which says "To clean up after removing MDM, you want to follow the steps for your hardware and your macOS level to erase and reinstall a clean OS. Also confirm the company or school has released the device serial number from enrollment if you are taking ownership of the device from them."

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/442147/how-to-chec...

Also, this looks really helpful:

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/detecting-user-...

No - if it was activated under your Apple ID, you're good to go.

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