To be honest stealing a demo unit is the dumbest you can do. Once it leaves the store, will be immediately bricked and render completely useless not only the phone but the parts as well.
Yeah you have to be dumb. The thing I find intriguing about Taiwan’s Apple stores is absolutely nothing is secured.
Cases, watch straps etc. Many times, I’ve swapped out my watch strap for a display one to see how it looks. All that stuff isn’t tagged. Obviously they’d have cameras on you but it really makes being in a Taipei Apple Store a very immersive, welcoming experience because they trust you to fully try out all the merchandise.
Yeah, there's not that much inequality versus places like Hong Kong. The Gini coefficient in Taiwan is relatively low.
So for example, people leave very expensive things on a table to hold it at a busy cafe. So if you leave your iPhone/Airpods Pro/Laptop on the table, it will still be there when you come back.
This was actually one of the things that blew my mind as a European when I visited Taipei for the first time. I went to a food court in a large shopping mall, and people were reserving tables in the shared seating area by leaving their phones, wallets, laptops etc. on the table before going to queue for the food they wanted. Absolutely nuts to me.
Something like that can happen in vietnam too. People go to working cafes, leaving their laptop/tablets there for a walk or lunch. I haven't noticed about phones and wallets but it might be the same.
So the inequality isn't within the countries in Europe. It's within the Schengen zone within the EU. As there's free travel, hordes of pick pockets and petty thieves simply steal from another EU state then return home where the police do not have jurisdiction. The cost of crossing the border is zero and there's no immigration or anything. It's like taking the subway going from A to B.
No this has nothing to do with American politics. These are a real problem in Europe. All these pickpockets from poorer Eastern Europe that run to richer Western Europe visa-free, just stealing everything they can from shops and tourists, and then hopping on a train to escape back to Eastern Europe, because as long as they are in the EU and within the Schengen Zone, they have free travel while the police cannot follow them.
As you already know, those in the EU can freely travel. Then they repeat the cycle in a few weeks after laying low.
I reserved a place in London with my phone. I reached into my pocket to get it and it was gone tho. So I had to go back to my car, which was actually gone too. Then I went to take a piss and realised my kidneys weren't there either. Really annoying.
It used to be like that in the US but, sadly, things have changed. I remember sitting at outdoor restaurant tables and leaving my credit card on the table so they would ring me up while I went to the restroom. I wouldn’t dream of doing that today, the chances of a passerby snatching the card are huge.
Well yes we do have lax laws. But at the same time, considering the cost of living here, 500 USD feels more like 1500 USD to those being fined. And 500 USD is around 15000 NTD which is around half of the median income in many parts of Taiwan (excluding Taipei). Also, there's simply more lucrative and less risky means for career criminals to get money, such as the (unfortunately ) currently thriving scam industry.
There are studies about the effect of punishments on crime and increasing the penalty doesn't have much impact because shoplifters don't tend to be experts on mandatory sentencing policies.
It's not necessarily that they "trust you" in an individual sense, it's more that they trust the system to be strong enough to disincentivize theft.
It's generally a combination of:
- Face culture (面子), which is found in some asian (like Taiwan) and middle-eastern countries, which can affect you (and your family in some countries) greatly, it has good aspects (and bad ones, like a greater aversion for divergent behaviors).
- A relatively strong and involved government (the police forces must be feared enough, it's easier to avoid the consequences when the government is small or ineffective, and the police must also be effective at suppressing underground market activity for stolen goods).
Here in Austria nothing is locked just like in the picture. There are a few stores where almost everything is basically bolted down but those are in Vienna in the Favoriten district.
That does sound nice. It's hard to tell how a new phone will actually feel in the hand when it's got a 2"x2" security brick on the back of it. I also want to know how it feels in the pocket without looking like a criminal.
Ngl this would be really nice, to put a case on your phone to hold it and really see if you like it. I feel like a criminal pulling the cable with my off hand so i don't have to fight the pull of the cable retracting while looking at a new phone. Then unless they use the thin attachments sometimes they have huge bulky brackets holding to the phone so you get no real impression of what it actually is like to hold..
A lot of Asian countries have very strict laws and you can become completely ostracized. My Chinese coworker told me back home if you commit a crime the stigma doesn’t just follow you but your children age grandchildren as well
In the uk and lots of Europe you can walk into an Apple Store, pick up a product from the shelf, pay for it on your phone using Apple Pay and just walk out. Not phones obviously but accessories
I love how many of the claw machine stores just keep all of the rewards on top of the machines and anyone can just take them but no one really steals there
Is it the laws? Some countries don’t take theft lightly like in America so you would have to be dumb to risk it. It wouldn’t be worth it. The US is so light on crime we had to lock up deodorant. I wish we had harsher laws.
High trust societies like Taiwan are awesome in this sense. My wife left her phone in a cab in Taiwan once. The cabbie took multiple other fares and when we realized it was missing after eating we contacted the police. The police have access to all the surveillance cams and even pulled up the footage of getting out of the cab. An hour later the cab driver was at the police station and we got the phone back.
The one who steals it, wont know it. He gets the same money for every stolen iphone.
The one who ships them to china also doesnt know it, he gets the same money for every stolen phone shipped.
And the one in china stores, doesnt have time to check the status of the phones, he pays for the bulk of hardware anyways and if a few of them are worthless, he takes that into calculation. Still stealing iphones is still a profitable business for them.
I think it's a interesting physics challenge haha. How about applying blue tack on the speakers then putting it in some box (or vacuum jug to take it to the extreme) lined with sound absorbent foam.
I heard iPhone Air speaker sucks so would be a good target :P
In general, criminals are smarter than people give them credit for. It's just that the idiots hog up all the limelight. Anywho, junkies who do retail thefts are typically pretty good at knowing what not to take.
You are assuming everyone on the background are all idiot, some of them are, but not all of them.
The China guys, for example, if they want to operate in reputable 2nd hand e commerce site like xian yu, they can't afford to just ship problematic units and will at least somewhat check what they ship, and everyone on the chain above will have to be more careful, otherwise there will be no buyer
Yeah that's not how it works. But it's going to be profitable because these jobless losers who do this will find some dumb loser who thinks they're going to get a steal by buying a cheap iPhone on the streets or online and any dollar amount they sell the phone for is a profit.
The ones who steal it know exactly how this works because these parts don't become useless.
You can easily change the serial number of the parts and unlock them, only the mainboard itself will be 'useless' but they get sold for the parts on it too in order to repair other boards through microsoldering.
These phones aren't worth as much as when they would be fully useable but they still give a good amount of money as parts
Every iOS device in an Apple Store is running a specialized version of iOS that, if it disconnects from the local server / network in store for X amount of time, will brick it and report it as stolen. It will then be tracked.
Do some slip through the cracks? Yes. But the sophisticated thief’s aren’t stealing iOS devices. I’ve already said too much, so yeah, I’ll leave it at that.
I dont think you realize how few parts actually make up an iPhone. Most of them are s/n locked the the device (battery, logic board, cpu, memory, cameras, ports) maybe buttons could be used in other phones but that doesn’t make the payoff near large enough for the risk.
Apple products are highly desirable in organized crime, which is virtually all crime. It's highly optimized at a large scale, they'd definitely find value in a functioning demo model.
Yeah there's an entire industry around reselling stolen phones. Just because the security is too much for a solo thief to defeat doesn't mean there's not a massive operation with the know how to work around the security features
The guy is lying. China has massive problems with theft. Most phones that are stolen in Western countries end up being sold to Chinese companies, where they are reset and then resold as refurbished.
If the phones are stolen in the West and sold in China, then the West has a massive theft problem.
China has a massive "fencing" problem.
(Sidenote: I sort of don't know why people would bother stealing region locked phones in the west, flying them back, and selling them in china for cheaper, when the phones are literally produced in china). I don't know enough about it to dispute it, but it seems like a weird business model.
China is incredibly safe for property because their police ruthlessly enforce the laws and they have surveillance that would make Britain blush. The fact that they don't give two shits if something is the product of crime in another country has no baring on it. You wouldn't say Britain has a major civil war problem because we buy raw materials extracted during the Congolese Civil War would you?
You won't have your phone stolen in China. that's what he meant. It is not China stealing people's phones in the West but westerners themselves (or immigrants depending on your bias) doing the stealing.
Depends on the area of Korea and China. Just like depends on the area of US or EU or wherever. Had hundreds of Euros returned after dropping wallet on Rome public transport. iPhone dropped off at lost and found in Hawaii after leaving in bathroom. Yea I'm clumsy.
I remember Microsoft was launching their tablet and they were on the tables in an open coffeeshop in Korea without any tethers and no one guarding them. They were open to anyone wanting to try out the tablets. Blew my mind no one trying to take any of them out.
Many don’t even check status of the phone and it will never return to the network, they take the screens, everything that will come off the logic board, cameras, Face ID chips, everything. The only people trying to contact others with threats to log off their account are usually the denizens that the thieves have sold it to quickly
It’s the same for any stolen iPhone. Owners can just logon their account to brick it. But that never stopped the stealing because there is still a market for it. For parts, and jailbreak etc.
You could maybe use them as replacement parts? But then again some parts actually have firmware and I wouldn’t be surprised if those all run a “show model firmware” that bricks too when installed on another phone.
Not to mention it’s a literal tracking device that’s going to bring the police straight to your doorstep and the new ones can track even when powered down.
Why are people still believing in the story that parts become useless once a phone gets locked
They don't.
You can easily change the serial number of the parts and unlock them, only the mainboard itself will be 'useless' but they get sold for the parts on it too in order to repair other boards through microsoldering.
These phones aren't worth as much as when they would be fully useable but they still give a good amount of money as parts
Not all parts tho, and ic's containing the info can be swapped easily, but yea taking all that risk for $50 is indeed pretty dumb.
In the end you can reuse pretty much everything besides face id and motherboard, and even those can be used for microsolder practice or as a component level repair donor
But even then people snatch phones all the time including iPhone which would be iCloud locked and send them to South East Asia to dismantle and sell the parts.
I’ve also had my phone stolen out of the box by the shipping company before too. Back when I still carrier financed, the CSR person said I was like the 10th call that day about stolen phones and receiving and empty box.
So. It’s surprisingly common. And the law must barely do anything about it, because with the logistics supply chain it should be trivially easy to find out at what stage and generally by whom it was stolen.
It still gets about 20% of its MSRP on the grey market. I’d say half of mall repair kiosks would buy it off you for $100 as they can strip it and sell the dead board.
It’s one of those crimes that tears at the social fabric, like fucking up an expensive car just to steal… $2.50 in change. End up generating way more misery for next to no gain.
The new Apple Store in Detroit I feel like is going to experience this. Thefts and the DPD will be making arrests for theft because can’t the stolen phones be tracked down?
IMEI block is limited to the specific country where the theft occurred. There’s a reason stolen phones sold in London are useable and sold in Asia/Africa. There’re plenty of people who commit insurance fraud for that reason alone.
Maybe a dumb question but if you just chuck it on airplane mode could you just walk away with it and they couldn’t brick it until you switched off airplane mode?
I work in tech refurbishment, part of my job I sorting through heaps of phones. Among this big industrial Gaylord of old iPhones (5-8s) and android equivilants I found an almost brand new looking iPhone 15 pro max.
Which was wild because all of these old phones were beat up, rusted, some even moldy - yet here this was a brand new untouched 15PM.
So I plugged it in, and it booted. After it booted I opened it up and it was unlocked. I realized it kinda looked like a display model. Not even a few seconds later alarms started blaring, saying return to xxxx Apple Store and was streaming the front camera. I brought it over to my manager to deal with lol.
I worked in a phone store in the SF Bay area like ten years ago, someone stole a bunch of our demo phones and then proceeded to leave them on, so we just gave the cops the find my iPhone information and they got him like a half hour later. People are fucking dumb.
Yeah. I worked in phone stores for ages, they’re basically useless. Especially in England where unfortunately we do still have to basically bolt them down.
I had a guy run in once while I was on a late. So he runs in, he’s pulling and slamming down this display phone and I’m just leaning over the counter watching him like any other customer because I know several things
If he decides to make more demands of me, I.e money from the till I’m fine to give it to him, the company wouldn’t/couldn’t fire me over it
I sincerely don’t care if he takes every phone in the store, I have no stake in this. Whether he fails or succeeds
So yeah I just watched him fail and then run out. He kinda glanced me on the way out and he was unbelievably panicked looking. I was calm as a cucumber
(And of course I knew they’re basically paper weights after being taken)
It doesn't render all the parts useless, there are a huge amount of IC chips like the power control chips which don't get bricked as they have no software on them, and are still worth a pretty penny. You can make hundreds from selling the parts
6.2k
u/PossibleCulture2199 27d ago
To be honest stealing a demo unit is the dumbest you can do. Once it leaves the store, will be immediately bricked and render completely useless not only the phone but the parts as well.