What happens if I don't turn off icloud before erasing and then selling a mac?

Question

What happens if I don't turn off icloud before erasing and then selling a mac?

I sold my macbook air a little while back and had erased the harddrive completely and overwritten with zeroes. However, I did not sign out of icloud from the mac before erasing, and after the sale, it showed up in my find my iphone device list as online and displaying a location. I removed the device from the list when it was offline, but it makes me wonder if the mac could actually be signed in to my icloud account, after the new owner has done a fresh install?

Is this in any way possible, and if not, how can the mac connect and display a location on my find my iphone after having been wiped completely?

MacBook Air

Posted on Feb 25, 2013 1:57 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 25, 2013 3:59 AM in response to mynameisnotjosh

Welcome to the Apple Community.

A few others have noticed the same thing.

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Answer 2

Feb 26, 2013 9:37 AM in response to Winston Churchill

Thanks Winston!

Does that mean people have experienced that buyers (unwillingly) end up with the data from seller's icloud? Or just that the device keeps reappearing in find my iphone?

I just checked, and the macbook has now reappeared on my device list after having been removed (offline, location services switched off). Shouldn't that require the macbook to be signed in to my icloud? :S

Any help/clarification is much appreciated

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Answer 3

Feb 26, 2013 9:50 AM in response to mynameisnotjosh

My guess would be that it's in the list because it hasn't been removed from the machine in question - which of course now it can't be. The present owner isn't going to be able to access your iCloud data of any type if he doesn't know your password: if you have any reservations about that just change the password. That would absolutelly prevent him from accessing it, and you from locating him; but you may find it difficult to remove the machine from the list and just have to live with its meaningless presence there.

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Answer 4

Feb 26, 2013 9:53 AM in response to mynameisnotjosh

From what I gathered from the very small number of cases I've seen, it's that it's more of an annoyance than anything else. It doesn't mean that the new owner has any access to your data and it seems if the new owner uses iCloud themselves with their own account that the issue goes away. I don't have anyway of verifying this myself though.

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