How many iPhones are tossed in the trash because the finder or buyer could not locate the owner?
I found 3 iPhones in so cal parking lots all in one week back in 2015 or so and returned them as I could find their owners. Nowadays you can't even locate the owner unless they through icloud make the info available, so it makes me question Apple and their ethics.
A locked device such as an iPhone is a disservice to the actual owner since the "finder/buyer" cannot contact the original owner.
All you get is M****@BestGuessForTheEmail.com for the iCloud logon screen to remove the activation lock on the device. Understood as it is a reminder, for the ding dong owner who lost it in the first place, of what their Account ID email is.
The “finder/buyer” can get the IMEI and serial number. It can provide information that it is clear to use on a carrier network but does nothing for the actual owner because there is no place to look up the original owner on Apple’s site or anywhere else.
So I ask in more detail: How many iPhones had to be replaced by an insurance claim and the found device had to be tossed because the original owner could not be located or found, all while Apple could have provide a simple notification page to alert the last recorded owner who locked the device after they lost or “misplaced” it?
The more I analyze it the more I notice how the Activation Lock appears to be a scam. Apple benefits by selling more iPhones and removing the lost devices off the market while the original owner pays a high deductible and the insurance has to provide a replacement which may be remanufactured lost phone.
Apple’s response so far is to constantly delete posts relating to this subject in their support community. I had six posts in different words all to be deleted minutes after posting. Why the strict monitoring? I then scheduled a call back and they never called. What are they hiding from?
Do I smell a rotten Apple with fraud all over it?