![]() While some of these phones are almost certainly stolen, many of them are not. There are many listings on eBay, Craigslist, and wholesale sites for phones billed as “iCloud-locked,” or “for parts” or something similar. The iPhone passcode will unlock the screen, whereas the iCloud password can be used to remove features such as Find My iPhone, Activation Lock, and to associate the phone with a new Apple account, which is critical when a phone is resold. To be clear, “iCloud lock” and a device’s passcode are two different things. Activation Lock, a related feature, means the phone can only be erased, used, or reactivated upon entering the owner’s device pincode or their iCloud password. Although law enforcement officers can’t always act on this information, Find My iPhone has contributed to the arrests of phone thieves. ![]() Many owners use the device’s Find My iPhone feature, which lets a customer log into an Apple website and easily see their phone’s precise location on a map, as well as remotely lock their device, which makes it much harder to resell, and worth much less than an unlocked, factory-reset phone. But thieves can run into several technical obstacles once they get hold of the phone. IPhones are convenient target for thieves because they're worth hundreds of dollars, plentiful, and easy to carry and hide. “But every method for removing iCloud involves illegal activity.” ![]() “Not every iCloud-locked phone is a stolen device,” RootJunky, an instructor at Phonlab, a company that teaches smartphone repair shops about software-related issues in the industry, told Motherboard. It is generally done in Chinese refurbishing labs and involves stealing a “clean” phone identification number called an IMEI.)Įach of these methods are used to unlock specific devices and resell them, though some methods are far easier and more widely used than others. The iPhone's CPU can be removed from the Logic Board and reprogrammed to create what is essentially a “new” device (this is very labor intensive and rare.Scammers can trick Apple Store managers into unlocking a device they don’t own. An Apple Store manager can override iCloud.The password to the original owner’s iCloud can be entered to remove it, which a hacker could obtain via phishing.Got a tip? You can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal at +44 20 8133 5190, OTR chat at or email You can contact Jason Koebler securely on Signal at 34 or via email: are three ways to remove an iCloud account from an iPhone: There are even custom phishing kits for sale online designed to steal iCloud passwords from a phone’s original owner. These include using fake receipts and invoices to trick Apple into believing they’re the legitimate owner of the phone, using databases that look up information on iPhones, and social engineering at Apple Stores. In practice, “iCloud unlock” as it’s often called, is a scheme that involves a complex supply chain of different scams and cybercriminals. But naturally, repair companies know that a phone is worth more unlocked than it is locked, and so some of them have waded into the hacking underground to become customers of illegal iCloud unlocking companies. The large number of legitimately obtained, iCloud-locked iPhones helps supply the independent phone repair industry with replacement parts that cannot be obtained directly from Apple. Making matters more complicated is the fact that not all iCloud-locked phones are stolen devices-some of them are phones that are returned to telecom companies as part of phone upgrade and insurance programs. Thieves, coders, and hackers participate in an underground industry designed to remove a user’s iCloud account from a phone so that they can then be resold. To do this, they phish the phone’s original owners, or scam employees at Apple Stores, which have the ability to override iCloud locks. The iCloud security feature has likely cut down on the number of iPhones that have been stolen, but enterprising criminals have found ways to remove iCloud in order to resell devices. This security feature explains why some muggers have been demanding passwords from their victims. Without the owner's password, the original owner's account can't be unlinked from the phone and the device can't be factory reset. A stolen iPhone which is still attached to the original owner's iCloud account is worthless for personal use or reselling purposes (unless you strip it for parts), because at any point the original owner can remotely lock the phone and find its location with Find My iPhone. An iPhone can only be associated to one iCloud account, meaning that, in order to sell it to someone else (or in order for a stolen phone to be used by someone new) that account needs to be removed from the phone altogether. In 2013, Apple introduced a security feature designed to make iPhones less valuable targets to would-be thieves.
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