Apple’s latest theft-prevention measure has gone live for beta testers yesterday, and it’s Activation Lock for iPhone components. This move is likely to cause some controversy as it presents another obstacle to DIY repairs using parts from broken devices. However, the company is also working on a solution to this issue.
Apple’s first significant theft-reduction feature was Find My. If someone stole your device and you had access to an Apple product or the web, you could track its location. Thieves soon learned to turn off Find My to stop the tracking, but Apple fixed this in 2021. With iOS 15, your iPhone can still be traced through the Find My network even when it’s powered off. It remains in a low-power state and acts like an AirTag, allowing nearby iOS devices to pick up the Bluetooth signal and send back its location. This means that even if your iPhone runs out of battery during the day, you still have a chance to find its location for several more hours. Apple says the location tracking will continue to work even when the phone is reset to factory settings with Activation Lock enabled. This feature is standard on iPhone 11 and later models.
While Find My made it riskier for thieves, Activation Lock was a game-changer. Introduced in 2013, it ensures that even if a thief completely wipes and resets an iPhone, it can’t be activated by anyone else without the original owner’s Apple ID and password. This effectively eliminated a large portion of the market for stolen iPhones as they couldn’t be simply reset and sold as working phones. From that point on, thieves could only strip the iPhone for parts.
Back in April, Apple announced that it would address this issue by extending Activation Lock to key iPhone components. According to Apple, the feature was designed to deter stolen iPhones from being disassembled for parts. It links your Apple Account to your iPhone and its components based on their individual serial numbers. This beta version of iOS 18 enables Activation Lock for iPhone parts. It won’t completely solve the problem as it doesn’t cover all components, and some may be willing to accept the lack of calibration and annoying alert messages for a cheap repair. However, it will significantly impact the market for stolen iPhones as most people won’t buy a device with obvious issues, especially if it suggests it may contain stolen parts.
A thief considering stealing an iPhone now knows that their location can be tracked, they can’t sell it as a working phone, and its value as parts has decreased. While many phone thefts are committed by drug addicts who are motivated by money, this is still a step forward in persuading thieves to choose other brands.
The downside is that it makes it more difficult to repair an iPhone using parts from legitimately acquired broken devices. Apple resellers have previously faced issues with the original implementation of Activation Lock. Private sales can be disrupted when sellers are unaware of the feature, and new owners may encounter problems during setup. Corporate sales have been a greater challenge as companies typically replace devices on fixed upgrade cycles. It’s not practical to remove Activation Lock on each device individually when selling old devices in bulk.
However, Apple has already introduced the ability to remove Activation Locks from Macs when wiping them rather than during setup. This is also coming to Apple Business Manager, allowing enterprise customers to remove Activation Lock from batches of managed devices when preparing for sale. All that’s needed now is to ensure this covers Activation Lock for parts. With this in place, it’s a great step towards making iPhones almost theft-proof.
Photo by Eugene Chystiakov on Unsplash.
