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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

Not a single report came in. They’re good services, but if the thieves are smart the odds you’re getting anything back are slim.

My wife lost her iPhone 3G a few years ago and oddly it eventually turned up on Find My iPhone (which I use very frequently) a month or two ago. I have to wonder if at least in a phone's case, it uses the IMEI or something in its tracking rather than merely the iCloud login since you'd expect a phone to be wiped/reset within such a long timeframe. Maybe iCloud should (or does?) do a similar thing with MAC addresses or some other sort of internal serial number when it comes to tracing lost/stolen devices.

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With iOS7 and Find my iPhone enabled, your phone cannot be restored without entering your iTunes username and password. Your phone is literally worthless with out it.

>literally worthless

I don't think you understand hacking...

I have jailbroken many an iPhone, so I have a bit of an idea. Apple's security is really quite strong. If you are trying to equate hacking to magic, I don't think you understand it.

> Apple's security is really quite strong. Funny. Every single one of my friends in the IT security business strongly disagrees with this statement.

Ok, the iPhone device security is really quite strong. As for whatever else Apple does, it's not relevant to this discussion.

> I don't think you understand hacking...

I don't think you've been following the iOS7 updates closely.

If you ever manage to do a DFU, you won't be able to restore. And if you ever manage to restore and jailbreak, you'll never be able to connect to iTunes, use the AppStore, or sync with Apple again. Which means, the phone is either worthless or at least seriously crippled.

Can't you put it in DFU mode and reinstall the whole system?

Doesn't matter. It ties your IMEI to your Apple login so after you restore you're still locked out. I've seen it action after unlocking an iPhone recently.

...and? what happened next? Did you find it?

Since it was over a year later, my wife thought she'd "lost" it, we'd already mentally written it off, and it couldn't be easily traced to a specific property, I decided to let it go because I doubt the police would have been interested or useful.

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