Please can you help? Been ripped off with DS Christmas Gift.

[Gossipmonster]

Last resort is to ask here dear Mumsnetters.

Can anyone offer me some advice please?

OH bought DS an iphone 4S from Gumtree yesterday for £140 for Christmas. We could not afford to buy him a brand new one.

It has been updated to ios 7 and restored to factory settings. Problem is that it is already linked to an apple account. Person we bought it from is refusing to communicate with us and seems unable to remove the device from the iTunes account. Meaning it is useless and the money I had put by for DS present has gone :( We have 5 other kids to buy for.

I have contacted the police who were really helpful and say it is not registered as stolen but was checked a few months ago at a cash converters suggesting the person we bought it from has experienced the same issues and just passed it on to us.

Police have suggested contacting Apple (which we did yesterday and then can't help) or taking it to a phone unlocking shop. We have reported the seller to Gumtree but that is not going to get us a refund.

Does anyone have any experience of this and know of any solutions?

TIA

Anyway,none of this is helpful to the OP.

I can just see lots of possible scenarios where someone might sell on an iPhone in good faith (clearly not the bastard who sold the OP's) or where people get stuck with useless bricks because of Apple's high-handedness.

If this feature prevents theft then that's great, but it should be time limited.

So, you just hold onto your nicked phone until it magically unlocked. Great idea. Not.

I can just see lots of possible scenarios where someone might sell on an iPhone in good faith

I can't - well not ones where they wouldn't offer a full refund when the mistake is discovered.

Personally, I think it's been locked deliberately - if it ere impossible to unlock them, Apple wouldn't be able to have refurbished phones. I thought that when you send a phone for repair, you get one back that they've already repaired, not yours.

how did you pay op - was it paypal or cash?

Hi gossip monster I have just got a new ipad for my birthday and a new contract phone.. I have an iphone4 but it has a crack in the back I think you can replace it for about 20 pounds I would like you to have it if it would be any use to you?

Unlocked if it's not reported lost or stolen.

In the meantime, if Apple were nice and indeed serious about the crime aspect, why don't they contact the original owner to alert them to checks like those made at Cash Converters?

pretty that is really nice of you.

I really hope you can get this sorted, OP :)

I thought it was common sense/knowledge that you should leave a note of any passwords etc with, say, a will in the event of your untimely demise.

That's easier said than done, and is something of a counsel of perfection. How often do wills get revisited? Every ten years? How often are/should passwords changed? New accounts added? Rather more frequently than that. It also gets increasingly complex if people are using two-factor authentication which, in a circular fashion, may rely on access to their phone.

The whole issue of "what happens to online things when people die" is a fascinating, and currently almost unexplored, research topic: because computing is a young person's game, who not only aren't expecting to die themselves, but have parents who are many years from that being an issue, it's completely ignored (you can also see this in the "memorable question" type stuff, which are clearly aimed at twenty-somethings).

Its not the person who nicks it that gets screwed though is it, it's the poor bugger who buys it in al, innocence that gets screwed, like the op.

She did the right thing and reported it, has been told it isn't stolen and is still left with a useless brick.

Its not the person who nicks it that gets screwed though is it, it's the poor bugger who buys it in al, innocence that gets screwed, like the op.

"In all innocence" is something of a moveable feast though, isn't it? If you buy a second-hand mobile phone for cash, what are the odds that it's stolen? I don't know, but clearly the people who steal mobile phones have to move them on somehow, so the odds are distinctly non-zero.

Time was that the theft of car radios was a massive problem, and drove huge amounts of car crime; it wasn't so much the radio, as the hassle of getting the locks or window repaired. Car radio theft is now pretty much over: car radios are custom fit to the car and usually tied to the car's immobiliser and/or have a PIN that has to be re-entered if they're disconnected from the battery. Sure, that makes life hard for the very limited set of people who might legitimately sell car radios, and who might buy them for reasons other than thinking "it's cheaper to buy a hooky radio off a bloke in the pub". But for all the rest of us, it makes it much less likely we'll get back from doing the shopping to find a broken window and a seat full of glass.

So if all mobile phones, especially expensive ones, were strongly tied to the owner's identity and useless second-hand unless the owner has taken careful steps to disassociate them, streetcrime muggings for phones become a complete waste of time. Either you leave the phone configured, and get caught via it broadcasting its location, or you attempt to reconfigure it and brick it. Either way, no-one sane will buy a mobile phone other than with careful proof of legitimate transfer, and a whole class of problems cease to be problems.

Fewer muggings in the street aimed at stealing phones is a good thing, right?

It is and if someone who buys a phone 'on the cheap' knowing that there is a good chance that it was nicked then they deserve to be left with nothing.

However, the OP did everything right, including calling the police to check it wasn't stolen.

The fact that there is no way at all for her to now get it unlocked is terrible.

Yes, you could argue that a few innocent people getting ripped off like the OP is a fair price to pay for fewer muggings, but when you take into account that the people most likely to be looking for second hand phones are those who are unlikely to be able to afford new ones and not everyone knows about the draconian measures being taken in Apples new iOS, then what is essentially happening is less well off people are being punished for not being able to afford new stuff.

Yes, it is a good security measure, but it is also a good way of making it a PITA to buy second hand, so more people will go straight for new - something which I am fairly certain would have been part of Apple's consideration when they put it in place. Especially given that in the medium term, the determined criminals will soon find a hack, so the only people who really lose out long term of the people who can't afford to buy new.

Fewer muggings in the street aimed at stealing phones is a good thing, right?

There are "activation locked" iPhones on Ebay, listed for parts. Still quite a lucrative business, the stealing of them.

One thing I haven't worked out though: We lost an iPhone in Spain this year. From my handset, we activated Find My iPhone on the lost handset, and called the network provider to brick the lost handset. So how is this feature an advance on this?

There are "activation locked" iPhones on Ebay, listed for parts. Still quite a lucrative business, the stealing of them.

Yes, but it's much less profitable than selling them as a going concern, and somewhat harder to do for cash in pubs. Yes, breaking an iPhone for parts is going to destroy the evidential trail, and I'm somewhat sceptical about where those "we fix your screen cheap" places get their parts, but it's a very different class of crime to selling iPhones ready to use in pubs.

called the network provider to brick the lost handset. So how is this feature an advance on this?

That doesn't brick an iPod Touch, or a non-GSM iPad (ie, almost all of them) and doesn't prevent a stolen iPhone being used as an iPod Touch or a stolen GSM iPad being used as a not-GSM iPad. IMEI-blocking is also pretty hit and miss, and tends not to work (or, rather, the phones do work) over national boundaries. A phone blocked in the UK will almost certainly work pretty well anywhere outside the EU.

friday Ta for the info. Hadn't considered the fact that not all iDevices are connected to a mobile network

I fucking love apples security measures. My handbag was stolen from work. Because of that phone everything in my bag was returned to me including the only picture I have of my dad. The idiot who stole it had the cheek to look annoyed when the police tracked my phone to his house. His mum was so ashamed.

IAmTheLordOfRedundancy. (Great name btw). That must have been very satisfying . It's lucky the police could trace it to an actual house as sometimes it's not that precise.

The latest IOS7 version of Find My IPhone is fantastic. Its so much better than the earlier versions which could be deleted without the owners Apple ID.

A thought - if someone steals your phone and is able to access it, if they disable the Find My iPhone app then run a factory reset, this would render the phone free of the activation lock? Do you have to enter the iTunes/setup email and password to perform a factory reset (when not connected to iTunes)?

MaidOfStars That was possible before iOS7 but now you can't disable Find My iPhone unless you have the owners iCloud account details.

Good job too

If you are buying a second-hand iPhone/iPad that is running iOS7, you need to read the details of Activation Lock.

Here is the crucial part:

Follow each of these steps to make sure that you can use the device you purchase:

Turn the device on and slide to unlock.
If the passcode lock screen or the home screen appears, the device has not been erased. Ask the seller to completely erase the device by going to Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings. Do not take ownership of any used iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch until it has been erased.

Begin the device setup process.
After choosing a language, choosing a country, and connecting to a network, the device will begin activation. If you are asked for the previous owner’s Apple ID and password, the device is still linked to their account. Hand the device back to the seller and ask them to enter their password. If the previous owner is not present, they can remove the device from their account by signing in to icloud.com/find. Do not take ownership of any used iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch until it has been removed from the previous owner’s account.
You will know that a device is ready for you to use when you are asked to “Set up your iPhone", “Set up your iPad", or “Set up your iPod” during the device setup process.

Thanks IAlwaysThought. :o Yes it was satisfying. The policewoman that gave it back was amazed herself. Luckily he'd not hadvthe chance to sell anything on. It went in the evening and was found around 7am the following morning. The lad who took it is the son of a regular customer. I felt quite sorry for her. She was devastated. I did say that as an adult he makes his own decisions and shes not to blame.

So am I correct in thinking that the only value in a stolen iDevice now is if a thief happens to grab a non-PIN protected one for use until the owner bricks it remotely? Said thief cannot change the PIN (if there is one) or remove Find My iDevice without the setup password, nor can s/he factory reset because the activation lock will be enabled?

Pretty much, yes. And if you set an auto-lock timeout, then unless the thief manages to keep using it continuously, as soon as they leave it alone for 60 seconds (or whatever) they'll need the PIN they haven't got.

I also set a SIM PIN on mine, as an extra line of defence. Sixty seconds unused and the phone locks, and the SIM locks as soon as the power's taken off it. Completely useless to the thief, and very difficult to recover data from even with fairly exotic tools.

Yes, it's an iOS7 feature.