When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010, it not only engendered a non-stop stream of money for itself, but additionally for thousands of other companies. And as the markets for smartphones and tablets grew, so did crimes that involved those products. Easy to snatch, and just about as simple to resell elsewhere for hundreds of dollars, these products became prime targets for thieves. Around 3.1 million Americans had smartphones stolen last year, or about double the year before, according to a recent study conducted by Consumer Reports.
Facing increasing scrutiny, Apple introduced a new security feature as part of iOS 7 last year called iCloud Activation lock. Enable it, and you need to provide that specific Apple ID and password to erase and reactivate an iOS device. For iOS device owners (though mainly those with iPhones), it’s a free layer of security that ensures thieves — or anyone else who finds your phone — can’t do much with it. Politicians in cities like New York and San Francisco where that crime is the worst, and who had been hounding companies like Apple to offer extra protection, praised it immediately. Users also felt a sense of security in that their phones became a little less valuable to thieves.
But in the time since the feature was released to consumers last September, it’s also managed to gum up the operations of legitimate companies that buy and resell iPhones and iPads. Some have been left with piles of non-functioning devices — a problem that’s expected to get worse as the next wave of trade-ins commences, and millions of older devices are cycled out.
Eric Gurry of reuse and recycling company Mindful eCycling says,
The net result is that instead of that device being put back into the stream of commerce, it’s destroyed, and the parts are recycled as best they can.We’re going in the opposite direction of where our society needs to go to effectively handle the millions of devices our society produces.
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