Apple stops helping thieves if their iPhone is broken
Seems logical, but they didn’t yet. Apple will soon stop helping thieves if their iPhone is broken.
The American company will check whether the device is stolen or missing. If so, Apple will not repair the iPhone. Apple technicians will check the IMEI of devices before accepting them for repair.
Apple, thieves and their broken iPhone
The website MacRumors brings this news. According to them, Apple technicians will refuse to repair iPhones that have been reported as stolen or lost through the IMEI number. An IMEI number is a unique 15-digit number that is linked to your own phone.
The tech giant has reportedly sent a memo to Apple Stores and authorized carriers not to accept a device for repair. This is if they get a message on their internal MobileGenius or GSX systems that the phone was marked as missing. Presumably this means that technicians will compare a device’s IMEI with the GSMA device registry when a customer brings it in for repair. That makes sense. iPhones are loved by consumers, but also by thieves. This makes it a little more unattractive to steal a smartphone from Apple.
Register
The GSMA registry is a worldwide database. In it, owners can register the IMEI of their devices and designate a status for them, such as whether they have been lost, stolen or obtained fraudulently. This move extends Apple’s existing policy of rejecting repairs for devices whose owners cannot disable the Find My iPhone feature.
This, according to Apple, discourages people from buying second-hand devices outside of official sources. That said, users can just as easily go to a third-party repair shop no matter where they got their devices from.
