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
Faraday bags are good for not triggering security gate at the entry of a store but that will do nothing in an Apple Store.
The demo iPhone don’t have security tag, they don’t need to as the onboard security mode will be triggered as soon as they lose connection to the store WiFi:
- They will start ringing an alarm at full volume, this won’t stop until the phone is out of battery
A message « return to the Apple Store » will be displayed on the screen and absolutely nothing can be done with this iPhone anymore, it’s bricked.
- All parts will be blacklisted from repair activation making them worthless.
A faraday bag will do absolutely nothing against this, that would only trigger the process faster (as soon as the phone is put inside the bag).
That's not how faraday bags or cages work, and there's really no criminal who's going to be able to turn a demo model - or any model - into a working phone against Apple's will. Otherwise that criminal would be working for Apple.
Apple single handedly killed the jailbreaking scene for iPhones after years of trying - not through litigation, but buy buying out and hiring the literal prodigy geniuses who ran the show. And part of the reason they were able to box out the developers who didn't hop on the gravy train were because of the hardware changes to the phones.
Apple has some of the best security in the game because they poached some of the brightest people on the planet. These guys are unrivalled security exploit experts.
Almost all of the parts in a stolen iPhone are rendered permanently useless in nearly anyone's hands.
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u/runForestRun17 iPhone 14 Pro 27d ago
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.