Re:MacBooks from 2020 Are Being Sold for Scrap Because of Ac...
by max51 on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @12:03PM
(#34506438)
Locked iphones are easy to resell for their parts but you get pennies on the dollars. Last time I checked (long time ago), you could get the latest gen top tier model in perfect condition on ebay for less than 100$ with a blacklisted IMEI (they work but can't use cell network). For a fully locked phone, I doubt the thief would get more than 10% of the original value. They might not throw it in the trash, but they also won't go out of their way to try to steal the one you have in your pocket.
Re:MacBooks from 2020 Are Being Sold for Scrap Because of Ac...
by seanmcdirmid on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @11:56AM
(#34506320)
They get less money for them, but they still get scrap value. The fences definitely notice, they ship them in containers off to where they can be disassembled, so maybe you get $5-10 for that laptop, but hey, that is still some amount of fentanyl.
By making the fence value of the products less, however, it definitely creates a disincentive to work hard to steal a laptop. If it is easy, ya, its gone, but otherwise, their are much better ways to earn those five bucks.
Anecdotally, sometimes in my hometown I find dumps of bags from car thieves. I go through them and try to return the remnants to their respective owners. The thieves passed up things like a $5k engagement ring in a cloth bag and a startup founder's personal notes on proprietary technology just because they were not recognizable within 2 seconds as having value. Meanwhile, every single Apple device was gone. It was kinda 50/50 regarding Android phones, but laptops (especially corporately-allocated ones) are also always taken.
So if this really is such a dealbreaker, the thieves haven't noticed yet. Which means their fences haven't noticed yet. Which means their customers haven't noticed yet. Which means what you said is probably wrong, and probably there are ways around the activation lock that the authors of the article have somehow missed out on, or perhaps they're being sold/disassembled for parts.