what to do when "recycled" macBookPro yo thought was dead shows up in your account - alive

Hey there gwhz,

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. Where did you take your Mac to be recycled? If you’ve already signed out of your account on the Mac, you should be good but you can follow the steps in this link if you have any concerns about the security of your account:

If you think your Apple ID has been compromised

You may also find some useful info here as well:

See and remove your devices that are associated with Apple ID purchases

Take care.

Recyclers will try to refurbish as much equipment as they can since they can usually make more money that way plus it keeps still useful hardware from the landfill for a while longer. Even if an item cannot be repaired, the recycler will try to use as many good parts from the broken device as possible to repair other broken equipment or they may sell the good parts to independent repair shops.

If you don't encrypt the data on the drive, then anyone with physical access to the computer will be able to access the data on the drive even if the drive may be failing.

Unfortunately once you disassociate the device from your AppleID account you can no longer remotely disable the device.