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Comment by simondotau | Hacker News Reader

> I don't think placing the cost of unlocking on second-hand owners is fair in any way

> It's infuriating when friends/neighbors came to me with devices they acquired in good faith

If you don’t have the activation lock removed, you’re not the second-hand owner, you’re more than likely in possession of stolen property which has been dumped in your hands.

A stolen device doesn’t become ethically cleansed because someone bought it off the criminal “in good faith.” It’s still stolen goods.

All serious recycling services pay money for phones. Every single one I know of pays almost nothing if the device is activation locked, so it’s in the interest of the seller to deactivate it.

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I have never bought a new laptop (desktops are another thing) for more than 30 years now. I just get old ones. Usually from clients or friends at bigger companies, that are replacing them at a Windows upgrade. Then I wipe the disks (even if I would hope they are already wiped) and install Linux. Works for me. And I have lost a few to theft, heavy rain, drops, bumpy bus rides, wine spilling, etc. So I was happy it was not new macbooks.

But I doubt that I could have gotten a firmware password for most of them. They would just have been thrown in the garbage.

I also got a couple of phones that could be used for testing web-apps. The last one was locked, and it would be pointless to try to get it unlocked.

Maybe the BIOS should give you full ownership if it can check that the device is not reported missing after one week. But I guess that would give robbers a motive to kill the owners.

Maybe devices should just unlock when they 5 years old.

> But I doubt that I could have gotten a firmware password for most of them. They would just have been thrown in the garbage.

Exactly! Thanks for confirming my personal experiences. I almost thought i was going crazy with all those Silicon Valley fanboys telling me my personal experience does not exist in the real world :)

> Maybe the BIOS should give you full ownership if it can check that the device is not reported missing after one week. But I guess that would give robbers a motive to kill the owners.

I don't think most people (even most thieves) would kill for a few hundred euros. But hey it's just my personal bet i don't have actual statistics :)

> Maybe devices should just unlock when they 5 years old.

Yeah maybe auto-timeout of BIOS lock could be nice to enforce for reusability of hardware. Something like you have to re-enable BIOS hardware (such as iCloud lock) every year or let it will auto-expire. This way the Apple cult can be happy with their brand new iCloud-locked iPhone which costs more than a second-hand car, while older devices could be reused instead of being thrown away or piled in a drawer.

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