Apple sold me an iCloud locked MacBook Pro

I bought a refurbished MacBook Pro from the online Apple Store about two weeks ago. I’ll skip the details for simplicity. Essentially, I ended up realizing the MacBook is linked to the previous owner’s Apple ID even though it was completely refurbished and sold by Apple themselves.

The device being linked to the previous owner’s account means that he/she could have accessed my location, locked my device and even completely erase all my data at any time. What concerns me the most about all of this is that I only noticed the device was linked to someone else’s account because I tried to install a beta version of macOS. Otherwise, I might have never noticed.

To me, this is a serious security concerns since they basically gave someone remote authorization to access my location and wipe out my data which open the door for a “data ransom” situation.

I wrote this post to know what other people think about this situation and raise some awareness about this issue.