Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

I can’t believe the HN consensus on this one! A system that relies on the original owner to perform some incantation or the device is e-waste? Really, that’s the best Apple could do?

I sympathize with the resellers here. Often times the original owner cannot be contacted. Maybe they are dead and the machine came form an estate sale. Maybe it was sold on consignment or something. Maybe the original owner is just very difficult to find.

I bought a MacBook off an eBay seller, and had to deal with this shit. It took the seller forever but by some miracle he was able to track down and contact the original owner so he could unlock it. Without this hassle, a perfectly good computer would have been e-waste in a landfill somewhere.

Frustrating the legitimate second hand market and the ecological impact of all this waste is a high price to pay for mere anti-theft. Companies are very eager to kill the secondary market for their goods, and accepting this scheme plays into Apple’s hands.

It does work though. I had a thief break into my house a couple of years ago (2019 or 2020 can’t quite remember), they stole my expensive DSLR kit out of the cupboard, left the six-month old iPad Pro that was sitting on my bed.

For the dead person scenario, you can get access to iCloud with a court order once they are deceased, or if they have set up their legacy contact. So that would be the procedure to unlock the device.

For the ones in the article, the people sending them to the recycler seem to be refusing to unlock the devices and want them destroyed. Perhaps Apple should take back these machines for refurb in such a case (especially since they’re quite new)

> you can get access to iCloud with a court order once they are deceased

Even for important memories, has anyone heard of anyone else actually doing this? Just curious, lots of deaths in my family lately and i'm positive none of the grieving members would attempt a court order

> For the ones in the article, the people sending them to the recycler seem to be refusing to unlock the devices and want them destroyed. Perhaps Apple should take back these machines for refurb in such a case (especially since they’re quite new)

That seems to be the obvious solution: let Apple reset them completely, wiping out anything that could possible store any data, and make the components usable again. As long as Apple doesn't pay out any more than the shipping & handling of the laptops, there's no profit motive so the theft protection is still there but the planet is just a little bit greener and happier.

The 'mere' anti-theft and privacy benefits are way more important to me than the second-hand market. Plus, the difficulty caused by the anti-theft mechanism is straightforward to overcome provided the seller is legitimate.

Why should onus be on legitimate refurbishers and resellers to prove that the device is not stolen (extremely hard) rather than on the victim to report the device as stolen within a 30-90 day grace period (trivial)? After this grace period the device would wipe the data encryption keys and unlock itself.

A simple solution that protects both sides, it just so happens to conflict with Apple's earnings goals.

When I spend several thousand pounds on a laptop, I expect its features, including its privacy features, to maximally benefit me, not some hypothetical refurbisher who I, quite honestly, don't give a shit about.

Its privacy features will always maximally benefit you. There is no way to get data off the Macbook unless you don't trust Apple's secure enclave encryption. Activation lock is a separate unrelated concept.

You might not give a shit about recycling but Apple says they do[1], they really love to go on about how much they care about climate change and the environment. It's important to point out clear violations of those claims so others can make informed choices.

[1] https://www.apple.com/environment/

Well said! There has to be a better way to balance anti-theft and the interest of re-use. It seems abhorrent that fully functional, almost new devices have to be thrown away.

For example, a possible solution could be the following: If a device is locked to an account, the new owner can send an anonymous request to the apple account of the previous owner of the device, asking them to authorize an unlock. This would protect stolen devices, while also making it possible to recover devices where the previous owner was simply neglectful in unlocking the device before selling it. Of course, it would not help if the previous owner is dead, but anything helps.

This assumes the previous owner (still) uses an Apple account. If I were to switch from Mac to Windows, I don't see why I would check my Apple account for notifications.

It also seems abhorrent that fully functional, almost new devices are stolen and resold for commercial gain.

Apparently Apple is the police now and people want this. They scan for CSAM on your devices and lock it down to fight thieves.

Sing it with me: One of these things, is not like the other!

Look if you just want to get your 3 minute hate against Apple out I'm happy to yell and scream with you (fsck their walled garden), but scanning for CSAM on your device (which they took back and aren't oing) is not the same thing as fighting thieves. Hell, Apple recently made the move to allow iCloud backups to be fully encrypted, impervious to Apple, the local police department, the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA (unless they've broken the encryption scheme, and they didn't tell anyone, which is entirely possible, but that's like Edward Snowden levels of "they're out to get you"), so I'm not sure how they're "the police now".

Agreed! Let's try to find a solution where neither happens.

I really don't understand the argument for this situation. The drives are encrypted, right? Why can't the drive just be formatted and the system reused? The data is the thing that's important here, no?

Because if you could do this it would make Apple devices much more attractive targets for thieves.

I feel like there's some sort of middle ground here. If a device is still registered to the original owner, notify the original owner and give them a grace period where they can permanently lock down the device. After that grace period, the device automatically unlocks. Having to provide the sale receipt feels more like vendor lock in than actual security.

If Apple sent such emails out, that would just make it very easy to phish the original owner.

Nah, send it out via notifications on other macOS or iOS systems. Have it available in Find My.

That’s already being phished despite being in Find My. A local iPhone users Facebook group here regularly gets posts of “I lost my iPhone and then got a text from Apple to find it by clicking this link, should I?”, text sent by the thieves.

Adding a similar real interface (even if delivered by Find My and not texts) would just make phishing more successful. That’s why Apple Support/2FA prompts are verbose popups on every device you own at the same time.

So the answer to thwarting crime is just to have every device lucked and make the machines completely useless? Which just indirectly makes transferring the device to legitimate next owners harder?

I get it, people are conditioned to vendor lock in because of cell phones. In reality it's incredibly wasteful. I'm still not convinced the current way of doing things is best for the consumer.

It makes transferring the device to a new owner slightly harder. But it takes two minutes to remove the activation lock. If the trade-off is protecting owner privacy/disincentivizing thieves and forcing sellers to make a two-minute config chance, it think it's worthwhile.

How completely useless? If you bought a locked phone (Android included!) or Apple device from someone, you just ask them to remove & unlock it. At worst they recover their Apple ID and then remove it. Otherwise, you get your money back (almost sure a court will side with you if necessary).

That only works for people who have another Apple device. A lot of people just own one Apple device – their phone. So you would have to send out an email for this to work, in the general case.

Apple has no problem building features assuming people have more than one Apple device. Hell, AirPods can't update unless someone has an iPhone.

We're talking about a proposal that you are putting forward as a good idea. I pointed out that the proposal won't work for users who have only one Apple device. You've responded by suggesting that Apple wouldn't care. Well, maybe they wouldn't – I don't know – but don't you care? If so, how would you solve the problem?

No, I don't care. If an Apple user signs up for Find My on their laptop, then their laptop is stolen and they don't try to use Find My to recover it... I don't know man. It's a "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" situation. Meanwhile it provides the benefit where if you're sold a machine and the original seller can't be contacted to unlock it, it gets automatically unlocked some timespan later. It's not perfect, but it's better than the current situation.

I guess at some point this is a subjective value judgment that's not worth arguing about, but help me to understand this. If you bought an Apple laptop, would you be more worried about (a) the laptop being stolen, or (b) an indirect recipient of the laptop being unable to use it because they couldn't contact you in order to unlock it? For me it's pretty clearly (a). If I want to sell the laptop, I can easily reset it and do so. If you think about it from the point of view of Apple customers (which is hopefully what Apple is doing), then the choice is pretty clear.

As someone with a single apple device (laptop) that's not really an option, is it?

For some thieves the data is important. But for most, the hardware is what they are after as they can get a quick couple of hundred quid for it.

In light of all possible e-waste, and waste, this pales in comparison while giving the users a lot of power. In my opinion, it is an acceptable trade off.

Alternatively, the machines can become donor boards instead of e-waste.

Compared to the ecological impact of industries around the world dumping far worse directly into the environment, the desire for people to not want their expensive device stolen and resold is not a contributing factor.

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