Purchase of Refurbished iPhone

Suziemac49 wrote:

My daughter has been told that my refurbished iPhone, which I purchased to keep as backup ( not in use currently) can be "hacked via the IMEI. Is that true??

If you’re of interest to those entities with the funding for multimillion-dollar espionage-level tooling, sure. You’ll also then need much better security advice than what we can provide, too.

In the reality that the rest of us operate in? Nope. You’re fine.

Now as for purchasing used…

Purchasing a refurbished phone can acquire one blacklisted via IMEI, or activation locked, or reported stolen or such. Used iPhone purchases are speculative at best, and particularly online purchases from sellers prone to disappear.

Used or refurbished purchases from businesses with some reputation including from Apple or authorized resellers, or from local people you know and trust can work just fine.

No. A non-jailbroken phone cannot be hacked.

Suziemac49 wrote:

Okay. A better question is, how does anyone know who is or isn’t legitimate? I trusted the source. I have no obvious reason not to. Maybe I need to call Apple and run the IMEI by them. Is that what you would do? Thanks!

Apple doesn't keep records of whether or not phones are stolen. Your carrier would probably be able to tell you if you tried to activate the phone.

If you trusted the source and the phone is not activation-locked, you may well be fine. It's theoretically possible that, somewhere done the line, if the phone is in fact a lost or stolen device, that someone could report it to a carrier as such, preventing you from using it.

The All Too Common SAD Reality of Buying … - Apple Community

Your iPhone may be stolen.

It means to remove all of the safeguards Apple has put in place. It's the rough equivalent to "rooting" an Android phone. While it is not illegal, it is generally not advised.

rohitjii wrote:

Your iPhone may be stolen.

What makes you think that?

Suziemac49 wrote:

If it was purchased through a well known legitimate reseller why would I suspect that?

What “well known legitimate reseller” would that be, exactly?

Suziemac49 wrote:

Thank you so much. You make sense.

On a good day, after a couple of cups of coffee!!

Please post back with any other questions.