Apple will no longer repair lost or stolen iPhones

No, we won’t fix your stolen cut-price iPhone, dude…

If your iPhone is stolen and whoever ends up with it breaks the display, you may find some small sense of schadenfreude because Apple and approved third-party engineers will now begin refusing to repair a device that has been reported as lost or stolen.

We won’t fix them any more

That’s the gist of a leaked internal Apple memo which says Apple’s tech staff will compare incoming iPhones against Apple internal systems to learn the statues of a device.

This is status that can be checked using the GSMA Device Registry, which exists for just that purpose. From now on, Apple’s internal MobileGenius or GSX systems will automatically check the status of a device, according to a MacRumors story.

The GSMA database is already widely used across networks and manufacturers who want to prevent the lucrative trade in stolen smartphones. Networks can also block devices flagged as stolen in that database, turning them into bricks. With this in mind it does seem strange that Apple is only now beginning to follow this new policy. It is inevitable that people will ask themselves how many stolen devices its engineers have actually fixed?

Despite this, things have changed. In future, when a device is identified as having been lost or stolen, Apple technicians will refuse to repair it. Instead, they will ask the customer to disable Find My iPhone or find another way prove the iPhone belongs to them.

What not to do

Find My iPhone does two things well. It is a useful tool that both improves the chance of finding an iPhone that is lost and will also reduce what you can do with a stolen device.

[Also read: Read the U.S. government’s mobile security advice for travellers]

Discussing this news, one Reddit user explained:

“To the average technician a blocked IMEI device just looks like a No Service/Searching/No SIM issue and would be treated as such, ie a whole unit replacement. Very rarely would there be a flag in our system that reported the device as stolen/missing.”

Make sure they can’t cut you off

One more thing

HOT TIP: One thing iPhone thieves often do once they get hold of a device is use Control Center to switch the device into AirPlane mode.

Why do they do this? It is because doing so disables network access, including the connection to the Find My network.

The problem is that by default Control Center can be accessed from the LockScreen, and includes an AirPlane mode toggle. To disable this so thieves can no longer access that very same toggle, follow these steps:

• Open Settings>Face ID & Passcode.
• Untoggle Control Center in the Allow Access When Locked section.
• Job done.

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