Try opening that website on an iPhone and you'll be out of luck.
Oops.
Apple has rolled out a new service allowing buyers to check if the iPhone they're about to purchase is actually stolen. All you need to do is place the phone's IMEI or serial number into this website to be politely informed as to whether or not that dodgy bloke down the market (who generally avoids direct eye contact) has …
New revolutionary Tool released by Apple !!!!
Never *before has this been available to you and Apple is proud to be a leading Innovator in your security.
*all other sites previous to the apple site didnt actually exist your imagining it.
really not sure why this is news worthy, its been possible for a while
Bzzzt, wrong.
The site isn't even a database of stolen phones. The Reg as usual has named the article poorly. It tells you if Activation Lock is enabled on the phone with the IMEI you enter. If it is, you can tell the seller "hey, can you deactivate that for a moment so I can tell you're the owner", and if not, you know they aren't.
I suppose if it is stolen and Activation Lock hadn't been enabled you wouldn't know, but as it is enabled by default hopefully the number of people who disable it for whatever reason will be pretty small so it would be a pretty good way to tell.
The police or phone company could tell you but only within limited circumstances. If I steal a phone in the US, are the UK police going to be able to tell you it is stolen? Will you know where it was stolen from if I ship it off to the UK and have someone fence it there? Ditto the phone companies, is a carrier in Germany going to know if a phone was stolen off Telstra's network?
Ask the seller to show a screenshot of the IMEI and serial number from the phone? Its not foolproof, as they could send you a different phone, but more likely if they knew why you were asking they'd just fail to respond and you'd have your answer right there.
If they do send you a different phone from the one they said they would, it will be pretty easy to get your money refunded by eBay. Not saying I'd recommend buying an iPhone from eBay though, you aren't likely to get much better prices there than you could get elsewhere and if you do, you have to ask yourself why that would be...
If you think the odds of getting your money back are tiny, I guess you've never had to get eBay to refund your money when you were sold an item that doesn't work or wasn't what was described. I have, and I've had no problem getting my money back. I did lose out a bit once because i had to ship the (DOA) item back at my expense, probably because the seller thought I was trying to scam HIM. The other two times the seller clammed up after the sale and wouldn't respond, and eBay refunded my money and it didn't cost me anything other than a few minutes filling out an online form.
The entire iCloud website is so keen to tell you to go away if you've got an Android browser thanks to browser sniffing (even though Safari, Android Browser, and Chrome are all webkit based so the differences should be minimal) that if you check http://www.icloud.com/activationlock/ from an Android browser you get the same error message.
Hello Apple! Think of the use cases!
When dealing with a telco's enterprise customer support, a little bit of social engineering can do miracles. As an example, I've seen very often the CSRs bypassing the proper identification process to speed up things, especially when put under pressure from the (purported) customer.
It's a great idea but you still have some very horrible people who will report the phone stolen within about 10 minutes of the purchase and claim on insurance etc. Either that or simply stop paying the monthly contract. A better app would be to see if the phone is still attached to a monthly contract and if that contract still has time to run.? The Apple activation lock is a one hammer to smash all phones approach, It hurts the legitimate sales as well as the illegitimate ones too.