Context: iPhone was stolen in Spain (attenzione pickpocket!!) and carrier has blacklisted it and I have attempted to mark it stolen through Apple (will work if phone connects to internet).
What do these steps exactly do?
In: Technology
Prevent anyone from activating it in their name. It won’t result in criminal charges or the confiscation and return of your phone I’m afraid, or it wouldn’t in the USA. If you got an insurance payout on it even if it ends up back in the hands of your provider or Apple, it still will just be sent back in for refurbishment where it will either be given a new IMEI or its existing one will be unflagged.
The steps are meant to work on a societal level, not an individual one. If phones are bricked when stolen, then it makes them less attractive to steal, knowing that they can’t be resold.
Making the phone as stolen prevents it from talking to apple services and depending on your device setup, might trigger a remote wipe.
This does not prevent people from using the phone as a phone, or hacking into the device to use software that doesnt require apple services.
The carrier blacklisting the IMEI means they will not allow it onto their network. So if verizon blacklisted the phone, than that phone will no longer be allowed on verizon networks. This does not prevent the phone from being used on AT&T networks.
Typically stolen phones either goto places like china where they are harvested for parts or to markets where the legality of foreign laws do not apply (IE places like south america/africa/etc).
In theory it should prevent the phone from being activated by another person. In practice it will be shipped to China and flashed with a hacked OS that bypasses the activation then sold for cheap.
Every phone has several different number associated with it, and one of those numbers is called an International Mobile Equipment Identifier, or IMEI. Whenever a phone tries to connect to a network, it sends along its IMEI number to the cellphone tower. This helps the carrier know what type of phone it is, and can also identify who it belongs to. It’s basically a universally standardized serial number that links back to one specific phone.
When you report a phone as stolen, that IMEI number gets added to a giant list of phones that are known to be stolen/bad called a “blacklist”. This list is massive, with potentially millions of devices on it. When a phone sends its IMEI number to a cellphone tower, the cellphone company will check the IMEI number against the blacklist and won’t activate the connection if it’s a blacklisted device. At least in the US, carriers are sometimes required to file a police report every time someone tries to activate a phone that’s blacklisted. This makes it effectively impossible for it to be re-used on any cellphone network.
Now, most reputable pawn shops will also search a phone’s IMEI number against this blacklist before buying a phone to prevent themselves from getting burned buying stolen products. This prevents someone from reselling the phone to someone reputable.
What it doesn’t prevent, and where most stolen phones actually end up, is someone taking apart a phone for it’s raw components like the battery and screen and re-selling those for a profit. It also doesn’t prevent shady shops that don’t check the blacklist status of a device from buying a phone, but those shops often just resell blacklisted phones to the people that take apart phones and sell the parts.
Be prepared to receive texts saying the phone was not wiped, they can still access all of your… click here to remove from…
Then a story, I bought this for my daughter and now I am sad.
And then a photo of some hand with painted nails holding a gun threatening you.
Technically, they can access contacts on the Sim, not much more. That’s the benefit of e-sim. That’s how they may begin contacting you to social engineer an unlock so that they may resell.
Visit /r/scams for the common scenario those with stolen iPhones find themselves in. It’s comical how copy/paste their script is.
This is why most stolen phones get to strange places like the SEA region or Africa where that doesn’t really matter. Becomes a bulk selling gig
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