[mvanbaak]

In my opinion, the article is wrong. Yes, if you get a mac with activation lock enabled, from someone who is not the person who can disable it, YOU are wrong. Recyclers etc should simply educate their staff to ask and validate that activation lock/find my is disabled.

Here in .nl when you go to trade in your used phone, they ask, they check, and they tell you how to do it (they go all the way though the process until the step where you have to confirm, and they let the soon-to-be-ex-owner confirm the reset) before they even accept the phone. The person who wrote the article should stop blaming the wrong party in this 'problem'. It's not up to apple to unlock (or create a backdoor that will render the feature worthless) the devices, but the party that accepts the devices for recycling/resale.