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Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

gothamist.com

211–220 of 319 posts

Re: Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is not a police state, they are a military state. The US is a police state. In China the local cops are generally far more hands off than an in the US. China is more top-down from the national level. In the US, local police are the typical mechanism for control.

Cops are hands off. When they need hands on, they call in the PAP. They are armed and have the riot control gear. China is top-down, except when it isn't, then its very bottom up. Is is sort of dichotomy of a central government with absolute authority but a limited attention span.

The central gov’t is a bit eye-of-Sauron like.

When it notices you, you’re in deep shit. But for the most part, it doesn’t notice 95% of what is actually happening.

Re: Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

#212
post #171

If someone in China starts harassing you or threatening you, just start sending messages that the two of you are conspiring to overthrow the Chinese government and the messages will stop real quick. These Chinese mafia types talk tough until you start sending anti-Chinese government copy-pasta to them and they shut up real quick.

It's probably best not to declare war upon China in writing. Instead, ask how many students died in the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. That specific phrase should specifically auto-alert the censors to a known forbidden topic, without resorting to threats against China. How long of a lost phone message can one set, anyways?

This will absolutely work. My friend is from China, but lives here in the US. Most of her friends and family are still back in China. We communicate primarily over iMessage, but also on WeChat. About 2 years ago I sent her a video about the Tiananmen Square protests over WeChat by mistake - I meant to send it over iMessage. The next day she called me, really mad; her WeChat account was shut down, without explanation, and she knew exactly why (my WeChat message). But what's worse is many of her WeChat contacts also had their accounts shut down - not all of them, just her closest or most frequent contacts, like her family and close friends. My account didn't get shut down.

The impacted accounts were magically re-enabled 3 days later. No email. No notification. Nothing. It was a clear message: We're watching, all of you.

Re: Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

#213
post #50

>it was in an office building conveniently located around the corner from an Adidas store lol no. That location is the Huaqiangbei electronics market - one of the largest electronics markets in the world w/ a thriving 2nd hand parts ecosystem.

It's roughly a subway stop east of it - the hotel I stay at when I visit is almost at the exact point on that map - but remember that Chinese maps and GPS do not line up (check that spot on google maps and then turn on the photo layer you'll see that the streets don't line up) - the actual spot looks like the mall even further east.

Huaqiangbei is legit (and a wonder!) - the spot that would be a real smoking gun is the Huaken Building (aka the "Dodgy Cellphone Market") which is south of Shennan Middle Rd and between the spot on the map and Huaqiangbei. That place is pretty amazing in its own right, at the east end people sell bits of phones, dead phones, 'recycled' phones - they are torn down into parts which are reassembled onto new PCBs and resold at the west end of the building - it's full of lots of little cubes, people each doing a part of the process and onselling their work product to the next person - if you ever thought your phone can't be worked on by hand, can't be fixed, you are so wrong, these are real professionals - they take junk and make it real again.

If the phones were simply being recycled it would be wonderfully OK, even if Apple hates the idea of this sort of grey market, they'd rather we threw them away so they can sell new ones. As I understand it many of the Apple chips these days are 'paired' at the factory, you can't just replace one (and they have to pass through the above process together as a unit) this may mean (I'm completely guessing here) that they're still screwed if the user wont erase their phone, even if they completely remake it

Re: Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worked out remarkably well for Chinese citizens given they don't care at all about them, then

Their GDP per capita still lags significantly behind Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan who all aligned themselves with the west. Millions also died due to their rulers through the 20th century.

Millions died due to their rulers in the decades before the Communist Party, too.

Re: Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is a side effect of Apple striving to design the world's most unrepairable devices, or more accurately, earn more money with overpriced repairs by creating an artifical monopoly on Apple device repairs using part pairing. Why else would there be no option to pair parts for repairs if you can prove that you are the owner of the device?

They often use security as an excuse to be anti-repair. That doesn't mean they're lying any time they mention security. Many of the things they do really are to benefit the customer. One of those is having strong locks on stolen phones.

Security is often a cloak for anti-consumer measures for companies. For another example, Netflix and friends have adopted the “we noticed suspicious activity on your account” phraseology to dress up their password sharing crackdown as something consumers want.

Re: Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly this isn't true, as her phone got stolen.

> Clearly this isn't true, as her phone got stolen Older iPhones are still in the wild. I wouldn't expect every pickpocket to be adept at differentiating them at a glance.

But that still has the same result, doesn't it? "Anti-theft" measure doesn't prevent the theft, only prevents third party repairs.

The average thief probably doesn't even distinguish between Apple and Android phones. A literal pickpocket is only going to have as information the outline of a phone-shaped thing in your pocket. If they lift it off of you and can't use it, they've still stolen it.

Re: Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She actually answered this in one of the comment threads on the article: when accessing the phone it will prompt you to enter the password for the Apple ID which happened to be her email address which happens to be able to receive iMessages. https://www.openweb.com/share/2hQferBhnDlJgGo4oE9Nv6wGjAX

She's wrong - the activation prompt ***'s out most of the email address. She likely had an emergency contact or 'lost mode' message on the device. The latter would still be present if remote wiped.

Or she had an email address like {firstname}@{firstnamelastname.com}.

Re: Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

#218
post #191
post #171

If someone in China starts harassing you or threatening you, just start sending messages that the two of you are conspiring to overthrow the Chinese government and the messages will stop real quick. These Chinese mafia types talk tough until you start sending anti-Chinese government copy-pasta to them and they shut up real quick.

Serious question: have you tried this or are you theorizing?

This is a well known tactic to do to Chinese scammers or any person you don't want to talk to that is in China or has to go back to China.

Re: Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

#219
post #201

Kind of sparked a thought in another comment but my thinking is that the best action in this situation is to simply not reply to the scammer. The author didn't explain "how the scammer was texting her". I don't own an iPhone. On my Android device, they'd have to have my phone number which I don't know how they'd get from the locked phone. Of course, I -- like many -- provide an alternate number on the screen for "hel…

>> The author didn't explain "how the scammer was texting her".

In a comment on the article replying to someone pointing this out the author explained that she was receiving iMessages and not simple texts. The scammers identified an email address linked to her icloud account when trying to reset the phone and set her iMessages to that email address.

Re: Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it

#220
post #10

Honestly. This is a pretty good advertisement for Apple. I appreciate the effort that they've put into making my device less valuable to thiefs.

Apple puts effort into making you go to them for repair parts. Any deterrence against thieves is simply a fringe benefit. Don't credit them for something that isn't actually their goal.

I think it is pretty clearly a goal - when you create marketing campaigns around an aspect of your product (and Apple has around this sort of security), delivering on your promises is clearly a goal.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the original impetus for this variety of security was a prompt like “what are some objectives that support us creating vendor lock in” - that’s how organizations end up with multiple interconnected objectives

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