TECHNOLOGY | CRIME
Apple’s Stolen iPhone Will Never Be Recovered
Ever thought what happens to those looted iPhones? For that matter, your lost iPhones? Apple’s warning to looters is laughably weightless. No, the iPhones won’t be sold for spare parts.
Key points
- An iPhone in Hand is Worth Two on the Loose
- Second-hand Hardware Market
- Black Market
APPLE has warned looters that it is tracking stolen iPhones, with a hard message that also rendered the devices as functional as bricks.
In a statement to deter further looting, the demo iPhones that were looted directly from Apple stores had similar messages displayed on-screen,
Please return to Apple Walnut Street. This device has been disabled and is being tracked. Local authorities will be alerted.
This has left some individuals disappointed as they expressed on Twitter, and others spooked now that Apple has revealed its disabling and tracking function for the first time.
CEO Tim Cook has not publicly announced what they are going to do to retrieve the looted iPhones or catch their looters. Nor has anyone from the company given a word.
We all secretly know the likely outcome of this looting episode: the stolen iPhones are as good as lost.
Regrettable as it is, theft is a crime as old as human history, with thieves surviving on their wits dealing on cut-throat terrains. You can bet on thieves and the black markets to find their ways.
An iPhone in Hand is Worth Two on the Loose
THE cost of retrieving the iPhone is impractical. Being a business-savvy monolith of a company, Apple will never incur more logistic losses just to chase a lost cause.
Neither will the “Local authorities”.
To put things into perspective, if a hapless individual lost his iPhone, all he can do next is to protect his data and identity by activating Lost Mode. Lost Mode has the same function as the ‘kill switch’, turning the iPhone useless until disabled.
His chances of getting it back can be safely assumed to be zero. Especially if stolen, SIM card removed, and disconnected.
Typically, the police will not expend resources to safekeep the lost property for logistics reasons, let alone search for it. Although most police department have a ‘Lost and Found”, items turned in only stay there for not more than a few months before they are disposed of.
If it is not with the thief, then it is in the dumps.
Update – More than just incurring additional logistic cost, retrieving the stolen iPhone could potentially hurt the company in the PR stance, especially in sensitive times concerning the political hot potato that is racism.
Second-hand Hardware Market
A teardown of iPhone X parts by PCMag showed that the pile of chips, circuits, and metal are worth $370 at face value.
But there are myriad of things the looters can do with the bricked iPhones than just sell them for parts. People err to assume that a bricked iPhone is useless. For that matter, you can count on criminals to think up something.
Refurbished iPhone
Without delving into the specifics, by using a special set of high-precision electronics equipment, it is possible to solder and reprogram the chip to a take on a decommissioned hardware identification number and “refurbish” the phone.
This will turn the phone indistinguishable from a brand new phone, save from cosmetic tell-tale signs.
And it has proven to work. A house-mum did it with online videos.
This is what a NAND EEPROM engineer has to say:
…There are a few ways to make iPhones useful despite a iCloud lock and carrier IMEI lock.
…They can also in some cases remove a resistor and place it somewhere else to make it read a different model (such as with iPad 2 CDMA model) but it is a downgrade (will not only be a WiFi model after that).
Granted, he also reminds us that most criminals will not be able to do this.
Breaking iPhone exclusivity
Apple’s exclusive ecosystem is a thing to love-hate. Sidestepping it has been the past time of many iPhone fanatics.
Communities of third-party tinkerers are fighting to get hold of more iPhones, broken or not.
Online marketplaces are filled with self-professed iPhone makers, with online tutorials on repair and modifications.
Shenzhen Electronics hub, China, is one such place in the real world.
More than just a place for hobbyist, the iPhone tinkerer market represents a larger movement against the notoriously exclusive club of Apple. These communities are actively spreading repair knowledge, and seek to bring the power back in the hands of the handyman consumer.
Apple has used underhanded techniques to discourage repairs, even compel customers to buy a new iPhone – one tactic is gluing hardware together so that they break when pried apart.
In almost a retaliation, these third-party repairers make it their mission to repair, in what they call the “right to repair advocacy”.
Right to repair is also part of a larger consumer freedom advocacy to reduce alienation of consumer from production process.
The tinkerers would be more than happy to fashion you a franken-iPhone out of the looted brick.
Sell the brick as new
If he-who-loots is not tech-savvy, well, he could always trick someone into buying the brick.
Fortunately for him, it can be very easy. Attractive knockoffs regularly trick people into buying them. Some $6 million business at that.
These iPhone and iPad counterfeit ring don’t even need to be as sophisticated as you imagine:
Two college students with counterfeit iPhones bought from China were able to scam Apple employees themselves! Out of nearly $1 million before they were caught.
They quite literally trade in the fakes for the real goods; send these fake iPhones to Apples stores and switch for a brand new one under warranty claims.
Unlike the scammers, at least the looters have a genuine Apple product.
Black Markets
ONCE the iPhone reaches here, consider it gone with the wind. Things escalate quickly in the secret world of iPhone black markets.
Often, these markets are overseas where network lock is not effective, and the demand for cheap contraband is high.
Phone fencing
Ace Wholesale is a thrift store franchise that attracts many people trading in their unwanted goods for cash. It is also the perfect place to turn stolen iPhones and iPads into cash.
It has become a key broker in the underground trade.
Police say that people can walk right into one of these storefronts with bags of as many as 30–40 phones to be sold at once, and walk out with wads of cash amounting to $20,000. “These companies fence the stolen phones for them, no question asked.”
If true, this is more lucrative than a bank robbery.
This equation helps explain why many people are robbed at gunpoint for their cellphones. Violent robberies involving cellphones comprises 30–40% of all robberies, and there are many instances of these robberies resulting in serious injury and death.
Phone trafficking
In overseas black markets where network lock is not effective, and the demand for cheap contraband is high, massive profits are made.
Out of the price difference between smartphones sold in the U.S. and overseas, a new crime was born, and it has a name with a scary ring to it.
Phone trafficking.
It is largely driven by the steep tax of Apple products sold in non-America cities and discount premium that Americans enjoy. Typical Americans can buy the latest iPhone for about $200 under two-year telco contracts — a price subsidized by the service carriers — while in Hong Kong, an iPhone can costs as much as $2000.
In fact, phone trafficking is such a established illicit trade that a world-wide syndicate exists to connect the violent street thugs of America with buyers as far away as Hong Kong.
“That is more lucrative than a bank robbery.”
Huffpost Tech covered the global underground trade with this to say,
Earlier this year, a woman’s iPhone stolen at a bar in San Francisco turned up a few days later in Lima, Peru, according to San Francisco police.
“Once it gets overseas, it’s virtually impossible to track a phone back here to the person who committed the crime,”
That is not all there is to their modus operandi.
For years, traffickers have hired teams of so-called “runners” or “credit mules” to buy discounted phones in bulk from retailers by agreeing to long-term service contracts. These runners simply stop paying the bills and sell the devices to traffickers who export them overseas.
Now even the homeless were involved as mules.
“…phone trafficking is such a established illicit trade that a world-wide syndicate exists to connect the violent street thugs of America with buyers as far away as Hong Kong”
Stay Safe Folks
BETTER keep your iPhone safe.
As for you looters, … you’re warned peddling is at your own risk.
Statistics reference:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/smartphone-black-market_n_3510341
Feel free to drop by, connect, or say Hello on my Medium and Twitter for more tech perspectives.
Or, read more:
