Comment by jrmg
7 hours ago
In this world stolen iPhones are mostly worthless because they can’t easily be wiped without the password.
In your world, they could be.
I imagine iPhone thefts would go way up. They’re worth $1000 and we just carry them everywhere - if they were easily resellble it would be a very obvious quick-money theft opportunity.
iPhones are currently the primary target of thieves by an overwhelmingly wide margin. There are many ways to wipe them and its an industry in its own right. One of the most common, as always, is simple social engineering. They contact the victim posing as Apple, convince them to reveal their credentials in this way or that, wipe the device and away they go. If that fails they're stripped down and sold for parts, which is also reasonably lucrative.
I don't know for certain why thieves are generally not typically interested in abusing user data, but I'd imagine it's because the penalties if caught would go way up. That'd go from what is generally just petty theft, which carries a slap on the wrist, to wire fraud and a whole slew of other charges, which can leave people spending most of the rest of their life in prison.
That’s all true, but it is also true that iPhone theft is relatively rare.
My assertion is that there would be way, way more theft if you could just downgrade and wipe.
It’s rare in the US and very common in London
Is it? Do you have any data to back this up?
Because a quick search for UK statistic shows that even though iPhones are minority of phones over here they are the overwhelmingly majority of all phone theft:
https://www.loveitcoverit.com/news/changing-world/mobile-pho...
"In terms of smartphone models, the data also indicates who might be most at risk. Looking at the entirety of the UK, 68.6% of stolen phones are iPhones."