iDevices are actually excellent at e-waste reduction precisely because of their "erase everything" feature, which gives owners a very quick and assured way to ensure the devices are actually wiped and reduces incentives to shredding devices or parts of them.

The article is about the opposite, and how can you trust that the "erase everything" works? You can't verify it without destroying the device, since the storage is not removable.

The article is saying that people don't unlock their devices before recycling them.

This could be true, but as I mentioned in another comment, as soon as it's removed from the original users iCloud account that lock will be removed.

> how can you trust that the "erase everything" works?

You can't remove it, but as long as nobody else can use the device to recover data then it's fine.

FWIW it's actually pretty easy with SATA SSD's to set a device key, which then encrypts everything on the drive at full speed: https://github.com/Drive-Trust-Alliance/sedutil

The drives are actually already doing this, it's just that the key is set to 0's.

I can imagine that, given the drive is accessed via T2, that Apples NANDS are being accessed the same way, in which case scrambling the key is enough to make it unrecoverable permanently.

fwiw self-encrypting drives always manage to end up in a research paper every ten years where they show the crypto is catastrophically broken, the key is "md5(serialno)" and the access check turns out to be if(!strcmp(pw,...) || !strcmp(pw, "letmein").

"Some institutions ignore the fact that you can safely resell these devices and just bulk-recycle everything" is not a good counterargument to the GP.

It’s only e waste if stolen or similar. If you are selling it then you can unlock it and there’s no problem.

The previous owner CAN unlock if they're able to and they know they're supposed to. Unfortunately I suspect a lot of devices are intentionally donated or recycled while unintentionally locked. I wonder what percentage of SMBs have proper MDM set up for their devices versus just a bunch of personal apple IDs with no way for the org that owns them to unlock them?

This is a self-correcting problem: if I buy a Mac from you on Craigslist I’m not going to say “oops, no big deal” if I can’t use it - I’ll ask you to unlink it, reverse a charge, or even take you to small claims court.

Over time, people learn this and it becomes routine just like people buying used cars know to check that the seller really owns it and isn’t lying about the collision history.

how do you reverse a cash payment?

You don’t, which is why many people either avoid them, carefully check before paying (Apple has a detailed “before you buy” guide for this exact reason), or in the worst case that’s why I mentioned small claims court since regrettably some people will misrepresent what they’re selling.

That just means it’s an education problem. Not an apple problem.

On one side everyone wants security and privacy. But when they get it they complain when it prevents them reselling devices that are not theirs.

Apple could help by emailing the owners and asking them if they want to unlock the device or report it stolen. That would remove the ambiguity, help honest recyclers and users and the environment, and generate evidence against thieves.

You could even go a step further and require the person requesting the unlock to provide photo ID and affirm that they are claiming to be the legitimate owner of the device to dissuade thieves from trying to use it and also for the unwitting receiver of stolen goods you now have a way to get that back to the real owner and potentially track down the thieves on the other side of the transaction. Sadly I doubt that would result in police actually taking action against thieves but a macbook is expensive enough to be felony theft in most places. The guy selling it on Craigslist probably isn't going to use a burner phone, meet away from his home, and use a rental car just to sell a stolen macbook. I think there are much better odds of identifying them if Apple would try and get devices past activation lock and track these cases down.

It's on the refurb companies to ensure it's unlocked before distributing payment and accepting the product. Otherwise this business is indistinguishable from trafficking stolen property.

Nah fuck thieves.

Please.

Apple literally just released a security update to a 10 years old device, and their devices have a huge second-, and even third-hand market so they easily live for that long.

There are plenty things to say about apple, but their devices do serve their lifetimes. I would be much more worried about the litany of low-end laptops and mobile phones that end up in the trash with zero value in a year.