[gruez]

>Apple could do a lot of things, such as preventing the black market for stolen phones from existing. A single city, London, had 80,000 phones stolen in 2024.

Doesn't iCloud lock basically already makes a stolen iPhone unusable? What more do you want?

[hopelite]

I’m not sure of the whole dynamic of the stolen phone black market, but if iPhones are still stolen, it seems iCloud lock does not sufficiently deter the practice.

[gruez]

Right, because they're broken down for parts, but there's only so much you can do. For one, every time Apple tries to do something to lock down parts, right to repair people decry it as some sort of trojan horse to shut down third party repairs. Moreover even with parts serialization, there's only so much you can do. There's no inherent way for a bag of electrolytes to identify itself to a phone. The best you can do is add a chip to it and identify using that, but you can't prevent that chip from being transferred.

[hopelite]

Thanks. I had not considered whether that is the market. It seems that it is really Apple causing that black market too by locking down the parts market and preventing and thwarting repairability, i.e., thereby creating and driving the black market of people who will replace chips and parts.

The solution strikes me as being to make repairability easier and cheaper by flooding the market with parts/components. Someone may say that Apple prefers selling new Apple products, but the repairing is not only still happening in the black market, but they are also not getting a cut of it under this state. Am I missing something?

[bigyabai]

Apple can do parts lockdown while also allowing users to service their phone safely with third-party components. The Right to Repair crowd gets angry not because of parts serialization, but because Apple uses it as an excuse to stop you from fixing your phone and reinforce monopoly control.

[labcomputer]

How do you distinguish between a legitimate third party component and a stolen one with the serial number wiped?

[bigyabai]

Stronger first-party DRM?

[commandersaki]

In recent versions of iOS it now shows repair history of a phone and if a part is genuine or not. That places a new tier in the market of parts for those with legitimate provenance, as customers of repair shops will now know what they're getting.

[stavros]

Phones aren't stolen for the phone, they're stolen because carriers enable the theft. There's a reason why thieves now cycle around on e-bikes and grab the phone from your hand, and the reason is premium rate phone numbers and shortcodes. They want the phone unlocked because they start texting as many SMS shortcodes (that they control) as they can, siphoning thousands of dollars worth of purchases off you.

If you make the mistake of not notifying the carrier immediately, which you won't think to do because everyone thinks the phone was stolen for the phone itself, you're on the hook for the charges.

Carriers know that no legitimate users use (or even know of) shortcodes, yet they have them enabled by default on all plans, exactly because they take a cut from this theft and they can turn a blind eye to it by pretending the charges are consensual.

[rkomorn]

I didn't know about this and it sounds interesting, so I've been trying to google how shortcodes can lead to theft as you describe and I think I just don't have the right terms for it because I'm getting results that match my terms but not the topic.

Any chance you'd have article links?

[gmokki]

I think he was trying to say that phone theft can benefit the same way as credit card theft. The thief uses the phone to buy stuff before the user reports it stolen. In this case the stuff that is bought is mobile services that are billed for example 100€ for each SMS message. The victims mobile subscription plan gets the bill and the associates of the thief get the money.

[stavros]

Yes, exactly, and the mobile operator takes a cut. I'm afraid I don't have references, I know this because it happened to a friend of mine.

[rkomorn]

Right. I guess the thing is I don't know how one spends 100s on SMS messages.

I guess that also means you either need the SIM card or an unlocked phone?

[Hilift]

This month, London police discovered and intercepted a shipment of 1,000 stolen iPhones destined for ... China.

"46 people were arrested, including two men who were detained in London last month on suspicion of handling stolen goods after 2,000 phones were found in their car and addresses linked to them."

These aren't local street thugs. This is a massive, global criminal enterprise:

"London Metropolitan Police, which had initially assumed that "small-time thieves" were behind the city's wave of phone thefts, got their first major lead on Christmas Eve last year. A woman using "Find My iPhone" had tracked her stolen device to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport."

"We discovered street thieves were being paid up to 300 pounds ($403) per handset and uncovered evidence of devices being sold for up to $5,000 in China."

https://www.timesunion.com/news/world/article/uk-police-unco...

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/industrial-scal...

[udev4096]

Why is iCloud lock such a casual, non-concerning topic? It just shows you don't own your over priced iCrap because iClown can remotely brick it at any point

[gruez]

For most people that's an acceptable trade-off. The alternative is some sort of self custody (and bricking it if you lost your keys), or no anti theft protection at all.

[dylan604]

To be able to lock a phone without having access to the iCloud account. If I have devices on my account that was provided to someone to use with their own iCloud account but they refuse to turn them over to me, there is no way I can shut that account down. I can report the IMEI as stolen, but they are free to continue using it as a wifi only device. If they attempt to move the device to a new provider, they are supposed to say no since the IMEI is reported stolen. Not sure how well the lower tier providers pay attention to that though.

TL;DR if the device is stolen from you by a stranger, this is possible. If the device is stolen from you by someone you permitted to use the device, this is not possible

[gruez]

>TL;DR if the device is stolen from you by a stranger, this is possible. If the device is stolen from you by someone you permitted to use the device, this is not possible

I suspect these kinds of thefts are a small fraction of the "80,000 phones stolen in 2024" that OP was talking about. Moreover the only plausible case I can think of this happening is for corporate devices, which can be MDN enrolled and locked to a particular organization.

[dylan604]

Small business (<5 people) that doesn't have an IT staff. Even a civil case is too expensive to do anything about it.

[gruez]

Your expectations are entirely unreasonable. Apple already provides a way for businesses to lock their devices through a web interface, which might require 1-2 hours for a non-technical person to figure out but doesn't exactly need a whole IT department to operate either. It's certainly not out of reach for "Small business (<5 people)". On the other hand you want Apple to get into the business of locking phones on demand, which is both labor intensive (you need people to manually validate each case) and prone to abuse (eg. in the case of second-hand sales). This is like expecting you should be able to walk into any Apple store and request any iPhone you "own" to be remote wiped/locked, just because you're too lazy to set up a pin/iCloud on your phone.

[dylan604]

I want to be able to lock the devices. I don't want apple to do anything. It's a shit situation. It doesn't mean that I don't still want something that can't be done. You're also victim blaming here, and it's definitely not helpful or even appreciated. Yes, someone put trust, however unwarranted it may have been, in someone without considering the worst outcome. Sure, lesson learned, but piling on to what's obvious someone else's misery is just a big fuck you so early in the weekend. Your heartlessness is awesome. This is like you thinking you know all of the details when you clearly don't

[gruez]

> I want to be able to lock the devices. I don't want apple to do anything. It's a shit situation. It doesn't mean that I don't still want something that can't be done.

So to confirm, you don't want Apple to remote lock phones after a theft, and you can already lock phones before a theft. What's missing? Do you want them to put a placard in every iPhone box reminding small businesses owners to lock their phones with MDN?

>You're also victim blaming here, and it's definitely not helpful or even appreciated.

You playing "victim blaming" card to dismiss arguments isn't appreciated either. It's not "victim blaming" to point out that contrary to what you claim, Apple provides ways to lock phones and that they're not particularly onerous.