Before you pay for a iPad or iPhone in “perfect condition” – and assuming it has iOS 7 or iOS 8 – you have a chance to make sure it won’t be… useless to you “after you leave the checkout”. You need to find the IMEI number of the device being sold – engraved on the back of the iPad case, in the SIM card slot on an iPhone – and visit https://www.icloud.com/activationlock/ to see if the device is locked by its owner and, very likely, useless to you. If the device is locked and the owner is in front of you, they will first need to unlink the device from their Apple ID and password.
After iOS 8, Lock is automatically enabled on Apple devices, meaning that if owners lose their devices, they lose their resale value. New owners will not be able to avoid erasing the device, after which the device is locked.
With Activation Lock, new owners will not be able to reactivate the device unless they contact the owner, responding to the message that may have been set to appear in case of loss.
See the instructions provided by Apple for Activation Lock, the so-called kill switch that will be mandatory for smartphone and tablet manufacturers, at least in the US, starting in July 2015.
In iOS 8, Activation Lock is enabled by default, but in iOS 7, the feature must be enabled by the owner, the version with which the feature was added as a shield against the scourge of smartphone theft in the US.
"Activation Lock is enabled automatically when you use Find My iPhone on a device using iOS 7 or later.
To turn on Find My iPhone on your device:
- Tap Settings.
- Tap iCloud.
- Sign in with your Apple ID, if necessary.
- Turn on Find My iPhone.”
Activation Lock, which was introduced in September 2013, has already had results: -19% in iPhone and iPad thefts in New York in the first five months of 2014, -38% in iPhone thefts in San Francisco in the first six months of the feature's availability.
The solution that Google has pledged to provide to the problem of frequent violent attacks on a phone, even a "smart" one, will be implemented in the next version of Android, Android 5, Lollipop:
- Smartphones and tablets running the next version of Android will have a so-called kill switch, meaning they can be rendered useless if reported stolen. The way this is said to be implemented is by blocking the ability to reset the phone/tablet to factory settings, a process that makes the phone look like new by deleting everything personal to its owner.
However, experts say that your most important secret is your email service login details. This is because if someone gains access to your email, they can find out a lot about you, especially if you've made the common mistake of using the same login/password details across multiple services
