[crazygringo]

Can this be used as essentially 100% effective anti-theft?

If an Apple device is constantly emitting a BLE beacon code that can't effectively be changed in any way by a thief...

...then unless a thief keeps the device in their basement and never has anybody visit, your stolen device will almost certainly be detected sooner or later, and then you just call the police?

Even if the thief has sold it by that point and disappeared, if local law means the stolen good reverts to you, then people would quickly learn never to purchase any phone there's even a chance of having been suspiciously acquired.

Am I missing something here?

[kccqzy]

Thieves already know that stolen iPhones are usually not operable. Even with the old Find My iPhone, even after the device has been wiped, only the original owner can activate it again. So these stolen phones are usually broken down, with parts sold separately.

[president]

They are getting smarter. A family member had their phone stolen and Find My iPhone reported that the phone was off for months and so she gave up searching. One day, she got a text on her new phone saying "Find my iPhone has found your phone, click here to login to Find my iPhone". It turned out to be a phishing page for her AppleID credentials. She fell for it and I'm assuming the thieves were able to finally get into her phone. To this day I have no idea how they were able to get her phone number. From the SIM maybe?

[jakejarvis]

Similar story here, but instead of a phishing email it was a legit Find My iPhone email six months later saying her phone pinged from Morocco.

So yup, sounds like they’ve either resorted to stripping them for parts or selling them whole (and still firmware-locked) to innocent buyers in places where you’d have practically no legal recourse — who then become victims to the theft as well, ironically. And by then, of course, you’ve likely had a new phone for long enough to not lose much sleep over it.

[helloindia]

Brian Krebbs covered phishing of users who lost their iPhones, although he doesn't talk about how the "thief" managed to retrieve phone number from the the stolen phone.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/03/if-your-iphone-is-stolen...

[yoz-y]

My wife's phone has been the same. I have left a "lost" message on it with my number just in case, that's probably where they have got it from.

[Izkata]

> To this day I have no idea how they were able to get her phone number. From the SIM maybe?

Emergency contacts (accessible while the phone is locked) + Facebook?

[rampant_ai]

> To this day I have no idea how they were able to get her phone number

Guessing here but maybe using "emergency call" and another phone to get the caller ID?

[dewey]

How would that work? I though you can only call emergency numbers from that mode?

[xrjn]

Whilst I was in China two years ago, someone mentioned that you can swap out the memory of an iPhone with one from another iPhone (e.g. water damaged) to get around an iCloud lock. So although it's quite sophisticated as a method, it's definitely doable.

[tinymint]

Not 100% effective - device could still be stolen and parted out

[SmellyGeekBoy]

If only Apple would sell spares through official channels, it would reduce the incentive to steal iPhones even further.

[kelnos]

I would assume that a factory reset would take care of it. Otherwise you couldn't sell the phone to someone else and revoke your ability to find it.

[matt-attack]

You have to do a full iCloud logout which involves your iCloud password in order to disassociate a device from your Find My Phone. It's actually quite involved.

[schrodinger]

You can’t do a factory reset without the device password.

[Karunamon]

You can still reflash with DFU mode, but even then you can't activate the phone if FMI was turned on.

[scarejunba]

I assure you the police will do nothing.