My son fell victim to the "blast from the past" scam in which users reset their iphones to the date Jan 1, 1970 and reboot. This effectively renders the phone inoperable. I've been on hold with Apple Support hoping to fix it. Anyone have any advice?
iPhone 5s, iOS 9.2.1
The only chance to solve that yourself would be putting it into DFU mode and try to restore it again.
Check this user help article about it:
I set my iOS device to January 1, 1970...
If this does not work, only Apple might be able to get your device back to life again.
The only chance to solve that yourself would be putting it into DFU mode and try to restore it again.
Check this user help article about it:
I set my iOS device to January 1, 1970...
If this does not work, only Apple might be able to get your device back to life again.
He's not the only one but I am curious about one thing. What is the alleged benefit for doing this? When someone tries to scam me, there's always an incentive - I'm going to get rich somehow.
FYI, the one that I've read states that you will see a retro Apple theme. It will show the rainbow Apple and the phrase Think Different. However, given the fact that it requires such a great deal of work, since you cannot just go right back to 1970, it takes 3 or more tries, someone should realize there is something going on wrong.
Thanks. I haven't seen it (yet).
In the meantime, I'm busy counting my money from the African prince.
The only reason I saw one was from another place I had searched and found a screenshot of one of them. It troubles me that people see these things on Facebook and other social media outlets and are so willing to make these modifications without any research. A single search on Google produces a plethora of news articles and the like warning uses how bad this is and that it will brick the device. I read one of the posts here earlier where someone was telling others that the DFU restore would not work, and he knew this because despite warnings about it bricking the device, he was confident in the DFU restore fix, so he purposely did it to his device. That is just pitiful.
From what I've seen the bulk of the victims are kids. I was young once and I even made a mistake or two at that time (none since).
HA! 🙂
I'm in my 60's and still do it regularly. 😕
I'm in my seventies and, truth be told, I never make misteaks.
Update: We've successfully been able to reset and then recover from a backup he performed 2 days ago. I'm thankful we didn't have to resort to an appointment at the Apple store.
I, too, was questioning WHY anyone would do this, but he is 13... I know my 13yo mistakes were prior to the existence of cell phones or any very sophisticated technology. 😉 He's agreed that he will check with mom and dad before he does anything like this again. Now he's agreed to help with dinner since I spent a few hours on this project I wasn't anticipating.
Thank you all for your help!
Glad to hear that you got it working. My kids are older now, and it took a while to convince them as well, but I always said, if it sounds too good, it probably isn't true. It never hurts to ask. Have a great weekend, and tell him if that is the worse that he ever does, his life will be great! 🙂
I'm glad that things worked out for you. Don't be too hard on him. As we've agreed, we've all been there.
As each of my children reached the age where they would be somewhat independent at gatherings with other kids, I strongly emphasized one thing to them. "If you're ever in a situation that just doesn't feel right, call me and I'll come get you immediately and I promise that I'll never ask you what happened." My older son called me once. This was some twenty-five years ago and I still don't know what took place. My younger one never had reason to take me up on the offer.
Philly_Phan wrote:
He's not the only one but I am curious about one thing. What is the alleged benefit for doing this? When someone tries to scam me, there's always an incentive - I'm going to get rich somehow.
In this case, the only motivation behind it is 'for the lulz'. Some people like to prank other people and don't care who it is.
You're welcome, glad the phone is working again. 🙂
Lulz? I had to look that up!
That's incentive for the perpetrator but I was wondering about the incentive for the victim.
blast from the past
