My phone was stolen, can I rebuy it with a changed IMEI ? - eviltoast

Hi,

Today I got my phone stolen. Thanks to some contacts of a friend I know it is now in the black market of my city (I know exactly in which store). However, they of course did everything for it to be untraceable. They changed the IMEI of my phone. I want to know, if I’m gonna rebuy that phone from them, will I have any issue because of the changed IMEI ? For exemple the phone being black listed, connectivity issues, issues with new os versions, etc.

(It would be much cheaper to rebuy from the black market than a new one)

I’m living in a country where it is useless to call the police to have some help and where this people don’t risk nothing going this.

  • OnyxVanguard1@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Former Apple Advisor.

    You cannot change the IMEI on an IPhone past IPhone 6. You’d need to root the device. Wikipedia actually keeps a pretty good article on what exactly is possible on which device here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_jailbreaking

    > I’m living in a country where it is useless to call the police to have some help and where this people don’t risk nothing going this.

    You’re from Québec? https://www.reddit.com/r/DopamineDetoxing/comments/gehj5o/comment/fpsfvo3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

    And as a Manitoban, I know full well you guys are a confused bunch, but last I checked your province hasn’t plunged into complete anarchy yet.

    I’m also not really sure why some shady tech dealer would ever want to change the IMEI? Was in IOS for 2 years and never seen it. Sure, it’s blacklisted if reported stolen, but to replace it with another, you’d have to have to replace it with an IMEI from the same model and rough manufacturing date, otherwise the carrier will refuse it anyways. Seems like a lot of work for crooks when they can just turn around and tell their prospective buyers to just use Whatsapp or some app that gives them a phone number.

    Whatever the reason you refuse to contact police regarding this is, if the phone was signed into your apple ID before it was stolen, it’s useless to whomever stole it because of the activation lock alone.