[jquery]

I remember when iPhones first truly became useless if stolen. Tech support forums were filled with sob stories about why a particular person couldn’t activate their iPhone, begging for a secret bypass. They would make up sob stories because otherwise people would just call them a thief and ignore them. But the tech support forums usually called them a thief anyway because most of the time, they were, and part of the cost of ownership of these devices is keeping them up to date and remembering the activation password…

Anyway I’m sharing this because the “my ancient unsupported 32 bit applications will fail”, while a minimally valid reason not to upgrade, reminds me a bit of the sob stories people would tell to get tech support for their stolen iPhones…

[ChuckNorris89]

>They would make up sob stories because otherwise people would just call them a thief and ignore them.

You're being unfairly harsh here. Most likely they bought it off the second hand market because in many countries people can't afford the prices of new iPhones, and then realized it's a stolen phone.

[rixthefox]

I think the harshness is on point. We've gotten to a point where people's lives are deeply connected inside their devices and people need to understand that it's not "just a phone" anymore.

Just like it's the buyers responsibility to make sure they aren't purchasing a stolen vehicle, it should be equally the buyers responsibility to ensure they are not purchasing a stolen phone. Proof of a clean IMEI would be a start. The problem stems from most countries outside the US not taking the IMEI database seriously and so in some countries it's possible to activate a phone with a reported stolen IMEI.

I personally think Apple's choice to restrict activating stolen iPhones is a smart move overall. If countries won't use the IMEI database, this is the next best thing. It's not our responsibility to "unlock" phones for people because they didn't perform due diligence.

[ChuckNorris89]

>We've gotten to a point where people's lives are deeply connected inside their devices and people need to understand that it's not "just a phone" anymore.

Then it your responsibility to have backups no? Forget theft, if you keep all your most valuable data on just your phone alone, you're one accident away from loosing it al, via so many ways other than theft.

>Just like it's the buyers responsibility to make sure they aren't purchasing a stolen vehicle, it should be equally the buyers responsibility to ensure they are not purchasing a stolen phone

Now you're moving the goalposts. A phone is not a car. If my car is stolen, I can't just walk into a Ford-Store and buy a new one on the spot for $1000.

What about stolen bikes? Police don't bother investigating such things and they'll basically laugh you out of the police station.

[Kye]

A growing number of people only have a smartphone. This is probably alien to most people here, but I've had more than a few friends who haven't owned a laptop or tower in years, if they ever did. It's only recently that you could even connect a USB mass storage device to most phones to do an offline backup. I'm not sure apps for that even exist.

[ChuckNorris89]

>A growing number of people only have a smartphone.

Yes, so do I and everyone else, but that's why most people pay for cloud backup services (iCloud, etc) or set up their own if they're tech savvy enough. So when they break their phone, their data is still safe.

Still, this has nothing to do with theft. You can easily drop your phone on the ground or have it fall in the ocean on vacation. If your phone is such a valuable tool to you that you can't live without then it's up to you to get various insurance policies (phone insurance, a backup phone, etc.)

[alexvoda]

You could connect mass storage to an Android Phone for a very very long time if not from the start. Certainly from the beginning if you consider SD cards to be mass storage.

And you could physically connect mass storage to an iPhone since before the iPhone (iPod days, same connector, same adapter) but unless it was jailbroken you could do almost nothing with it

[skinnymuch]

Cloud backups work if you have one device

[Suzuran]

When a thief fences stolen goods they don't magically become un-stolen.

[rodric]

I am reminded of a line from G.K. Chesterton: ‘Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.’

[ChuckNorris89]

Sure, but unless the police catches the crook an seizes their money then return it to the victims, then the person who unknowingly bought the stolen good can't magically un-buy it and get their money back.

[Suzuran]

This makes the unwary buyer a victim of the thief as well. All the more reason to brick stolen devices and make them unsellable by the thief so they can't victimize more people.

[jdboyd]

Or also commonly, the person selling it didn't know how to transfer it correctly.