Inside The Illicit World Of iPhone Trafficking
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
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A new phenomenon seems to have popped up in recent months... Many people are reporting their phones being stolen and popping up in the same place, prompting broader curiosity as to what is going on.
Today we dive into the world of smartphone trafficking to get a better picture into what's going on.
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Eggs
fix audio mixing, you're barely audible in this video, instead of barely sociable
@@512TheWolf512 that’s just not true at all
please make more videos more often...i do enjoy your style and how well its done... regardless, i appreciate this new one, thanx
These people give all Chinese a bad name
If you're Chinese, speak up about it. Stop letting your friends and family steal.
That compilation of phone flippers near the end was pretty disgusting. Those guys were willingly and happily taking stolen phones, selling them on Ebay, and telling others how. These blatant instructional videos on illegal acts are allowed on RUclips, but someone saying a cuss word once or twice or playing a 10 second clip from a TV show can get them and their channel in trouble. What is this platform coming to? Thank you for covering this Barely.
extreme usury
I dont really understand the argument for bad esn phones. Like it suggests rather its stolen or that the owner ditched a finance agreement.
So its rather theft, fraud, or collateral damage for a company suffering from a breach of contract. How can a company sell any of this? If i was apple or a cell provider I'd sue the shit put of everyone
@@notaraven ikr?! How on earth is apple not putting this to bed? Considering we all are dropping almost a grand on our phones- they have the $ to develop & deploy the tech to prevent the illegal resale of stolen phones :\ At a _minimum_ they should have the ability to sue the businesses reselling the stolen goods into oblivion.
another thing that makes this the more disturbing is the simple fact that a good chunk of the phones that these people flip on ebay are conected to violent crime, to people who have either stabbed or shot or even killed just to steal their phone and these buyers won't know or care about it just contributing to this messed up cycle
@@erickcuesta6168 🤣 letting your imagination run away with this story? There’s no fucking way that even 1% of these phones are related to any sort of violence or bodily harm. I would say nearly 100% are theft or scam related.
Growing up in Europe I was always taught to keep valuables inside your inner jacket pocket and for women to keep the purse over their shoulder when out in the city. I tell this to all exchange students that visit my university and still I now have lost count of how many of them come back from weekend trips to big cities with their phones stolen… cities all over Europe too. Keep an eye on your valuables, a back pocket is never a save option.
well thats because you cant tell them which groups of people to look for because that would be racist.
@@nox5555 In the videos above we saw they were mostly women, an Asian and several white women. The racist part is your assumptions contrary to reality.
The pickers are basically local hired help. It has nothing to do with race... It has to do with economics.
Wallet in your front pants pocket. For added security, wrap a couple thick rubber bands around it. When I travel to touristy places, I actually use a neck wallet and keep it under my shirt. Money belts are also very useful if worn correctly.
@@RobinTheBot im pretty sure Roma is not a Race, and the stats are very clear, 80+% of Adult Roma have prior convictions in a couple of major european cities.
@@Archangelm127 Are wallets on very thick chains not good enough?
Native Chinese here, so the place the phones end up in is a neighbourhood called Huaqiangbei (North Huaqiang) and it is a place for people to sell low quality or knockoff electronics such as iPhones and androids at a really cheap price and the place is known in Mainland China for it's stolen goods
My phone is currently in 深圳h has it reached its final destination?
As a repair tech in Houston I can tell you that the illegal trade of stolen parts and devices have become almost more common than not. I'm glad you added the part about Harwin Dr as that area of town is some of the most sketchy and dishonest businesses I've ever had to work with. The amount spent on tools and software to bypass iclouds and FRP settings is insane, in many cases these shops could invest in equipment to do more complex repairs. There are a lot of good reasons for bypassing software locks for customers (mainly reducing E-waste) but the abuse of these tools are what make the industry look bad.
Which tools bypass iCloud? I’m pretty sure that they literally do not exist. Not on a modern iPhone that’s for sure. Even Cellebrite can’t just remove iCloud.
Harwin's come a long way from counterfeit handbags and watches. As a native Houstonian, the evolution has been interesting - and a little gut-wrenching - to watch.
@@Psyopcyclops some tools sold as DFU mode or purple screen testers can be used to reprogram parts of the phone to make it look like it has a different serial number and other information, once the phone is reset it essentially is an entirely different phone as far as apples servers are concerned. Mostly this is a problem on iphone 10 and below.
Only people in first world countries are shocked by this.
I'm Mexican. Here stolen electronics are an expected issue and all these situations are basically the daily grind for some people.
I'm in houston as well. As a repair tech, are you aware of the sketchy brothels and unlicensed phone flippers in pasadena and hobby airport area?
My little sister got her phone stolen at lollapalooza this year. She put the message on her phone remotely to call another number if found and a few days later the police called her alternate contact. She said they had been investigating a ring and they found 44 at that time, she was very fortunate to have hers back.
That's good it's a happy ending. She can get a fanny pack the next time she goes to a festival. I got this idea now, it's good to engrave your company phone number and address on your phone, that way if found they can just mail it. I lost my phone in a taxi, fell out of my pockets, and the driver didn't have the new fangled USB-C charger cable so it was dead when I tried calling my number. I had to go to the police station, look at traffic cameras, call the taxi company, and eventually got my phone back.
Stay away from Chicago..
@@george._sir._gemini.175 chicago is fine lol, going to any large music festival is a risk for getting pickpocketed. see what happens if you try and pickpocket someone in Chicago in the middle of the street.
I actually work in fraud prevention and this is a really good overview of some of the types of schemes we tend to see when it comes to cell phones.
Such a great job you do at prevention. Probably have similar solve rates to the police in the United States.
@@ghostof1898 Might as well buy an apartment here since we live in your head rent free!
I'm not surprised that those tiny phone repair shops can be linked to criminal activity. They always look incredibly dodgy.
I feel like there's almost always one or two people loitering around inside when you walk/drive by
Why bc they are alwas Indian and you question yourself how did someone move from a poor country to America and sell and buy phones.
@@dabkevinhere5422 when did OP remotely imply anything that you just said?
@@dabkevinhere5422 sounds like you're projecting
@@dabkevinhere5422 my guy's immediately going for the racism card lmao well done
Was just sitting in the dark with my power out sitting through hurricane ian remnants when simultaneously the rain stopped, my power came back on and a barely sociable video popped up. This is truly a magic moment.
Be careful when the video ends the storm will be back
@@dotmp3883 Better put the video on 0.25x speed XD
still out of power here but I'm watching anyways
Very humbling isn't it!? Stay safe and best wishes.
Bless you bro.
And before you ask, no the manager cant stop the storm so dont ask :P JOKING JOKING Im sorry. I had to. Stay safe!!
Airline belts and jogging belts exist for a reason, actually a few:
1) They're strapped to your abdomen under your shirt and difficult for thieves to get to.
2) They're designed to grasp your items tightly and can't be opened easily.
If you go to any music festival, wear one.
and wear pants with zip pockets
exactly, my valuables are basically touching my genitals at all times
Very good for running too!
@@gliixo 🗿
I just do a fanny pack across my chest for al my important shitand it works just fine
For the life of me I just cannot understand why people prefer to keep their phones in their back pocket.
I use the back pocket if I wear women's pants, since the front pockets aren't big enough for a phone (and are sometimes even sewn shut). With other pants I'll use the front pockets, but that's probably the main reason for it
idk because clothing is sexist
@@PineappleKuri it’s a conspiracy, pants makers paid off by pick pockets
Good point
@@PineappleKuri Well clothing is often designed from an aesthetical perspective. When we keep in shape, humans naturally like their clothing to complement their figure. Tight jeans obviously fit the bill for this, and practical front pockets don't co-exist with that design. I had never really thought of it like that until now. Still, it sucks for woman.
I work as a phone repair tech in Michigan. This issue has been getting worse as more people get smartphones. Back when smart phones were becoming more mainstream it was more safe to buy used phones and tablets from people who walked into your store. 9 times out of 10 you were buying from the person who got the device brand new and only used it for 2 or 3 years. We would then turn and sell it to the second person. Back then a phone that had more than 2 previous owners was unheard of. Now phones can have 4 or 5 previous owners and no one will care. We see people who come in and say they bought a phone brand new and the inside of the device is full of refurbishment stickers from the 2 main companies in the Phone insurance game (I can safely say both companies names may or may not start with A). People don't know if they're buying refurbished or new devices anymore. These issues are so rampant in our industry that its just a normal Tuesday for us when we tell a customer the phone they thought they bought brand new was refurbished. My company has all but stopped buying phones from customers off the street; My store wont buy any device from a customer for more than scrap value. And at that point we wont resell the device, we use it for training new techs.
One topic too that you didn't cover in the video is how repair companies are constantly bombarded with buy requests for "old and used phones" the buyers will offer top dollar for the devices. These buyers are almost always Chinese, most of us who try to stay on the good side of the consumer technology world are aware of what these buyers are trying to get unfortunately there are people who just don't understand and get caught up in the web.
What are they trying to get?
Actually back in the day 2008-2011 I’d take iPhones and they were easily wipable back then then sold on for weed, nowadays the security is much higher on them.
Also lol the amount of data left on their phones was a fun window into peoples lives but I’d have the decency to wipe before passing
The Chinese are understandabley freaking the F out! Their world is a mess. They deserve a chance, but grifting the Western world won't fix what's wrong with their approach to life. #anonda
@@Randy.Bobandy any and all kind of pertinent Intel. Even the most mundane things can be treasure troves of data and info.
Lemme guess asurion
I was almost a victim of the "fraud trafficking" portion of this topic. I switched to Androids back in 2018, in 2019 I received a brand new iPhone in the mail (shipped to me at my address.) Ended up being a case of fraud where they open a credit line in someone else's name, they then contact the shipping carrier after receiving shipment information and change the 'ship to address' so they receive the phone. I guess they forgot to change the address or it shipped too quickly and I ended up with the phone. Took it back to the local Verizon store and let them deal with it.
Could have ruined my credit if I didn't get the phone and a few months went by with no payments being made.
That's wild! Someone did that to my checking account years ago! Glad you got it solved!
The fact that you covered people trying to recruit me for being a "straw man" while I was homeless (I'm doing much better now) and showed a news story from my area, I'm both shocked and not surprised at the same time.
The people that tried to target me as a straw purchase outside of the plasma ""donation"" center also tried to rob me at gunpoint for my CII and CIV percription meds. There's no shame in scammers.
Thanks for giving us more info. And good luck to you dude, it's nice to read that you are doing better
That ain't you
@@Rokomarn I'm talking about the fact that it happened to me, and that it happens to a lot of other people that are in the position that I was in. Should've worded it better but it was like 3 or 4am and I was tired.
@@brian954 that makes sense
Good job getting out of it Brian!
Literally had a Samsung s21 stolen by FedEx last week (box arrived without phone inside, got resealed). Kind of needed that because my phone broke and I need my phone at work... There's been thousands of phones stolen by FedEd employees in the last few years.
This happened to me, too. Had my phone sent in for repairs, and then I get a message saying that my package arrived there empty. Nobody felt responsible, neither the manufacturer nor UPS. Had to just get a new phone that I couldn‘t really afford.
that's insane bro
So many things get stolen by FedEx. I know of a sporting goods shop in my town that had half of an order of firearms stolen. Boxes resealed but empty. They caught the guy at the distribution center but allegedly he had done it for years.
the colurreds are at it again....
I repair FedEx trailers. The amount of empty phone, smart watches, electronics, and firearms boxes left in the trailers is staggering. FedEx has a MASSIVE theft problem coming from their employees. Christmas season getting here soon, do NOT ship via FedEx.
This is one of the primary reasons I use a belt clip. I completely understand how uncool it is, but leaving my phone in a backpack or putting it in a pocket is definitely asking for trouble, especially in large and crowded areas. I see so many people simply tucking their phones in their back pocket or in a bag loosely hanging off themselves. A skilled pickpocket will be able to razor your pocket without you having any idea. However with a belt clip, it takes literally tugging on my pants to unhook it. Another thing I see people do constantly is leaving their phones in their vehicles when quickly running into convenience stores or other places. Even in the most desolate areas where nobody is around for miles, all it takes is one opportunistic thief.
If you don't wear tight jeans I'd just put it in my front pocket, pretty hard to pickpocket, especially when other stuff is in there and you put it in sideways like this 🎫, not this🎚️
Your front pockets are as secure as a clip.
Actually, more since the clip can be janked off
Had my phone stolen at HardSummer in Southern California. Got a bunch of random texts with links, definitely not stupid enough to click any link. Sad part, it was my first musical festival. Had to buy a new phone. Thought I dropped my phone and I had 3-4 people around me doing the same. It took one person to tell us, “someone is walking around stealing phones.” Definitely killed my mood.
There's at least 1 app that you don't even need to click the link! I don't think you even have to get texted. Some crazy shit the way price of sadi Arabia got Jeff bozos hacked and took all his shit.
You're probably good tho! Unless you're already in the group of people who focus on great operational securities. Haven't heard the name HardSummer for years! Damn it brings back memories. Thanks for that.
Was your phone in your back or front pocket?
Had mine stolen at Coachella years ago and literally less than a half hour later I found a brand new iPhone (at the time) on the ground. I obviously couldn’t access their contacts or make any calls but luckily the owner’s boyfriend called and was able to return it to them. I was hoping the good karma would help me retrieve my phone somehow but it obviously didn’t work. It still felt good to do a good deed and not “pay the b.s forward” by keeping their iPhone. And I’d be lying if it didn’t cross my mind because it was way better than my recently stolen one but I thought it wasn’t in the spirit of the festival. Fuck thieves and scammers. I hope the get what they deserve.
@@Theonlyoneleft1000 front pocket zipped up.
@@nater.2278 It always creeps me out how good some pickpocketers are
First Internet Historian and now Barely Sociable. A truly great week for everyone 👍🏻
Can you recommend me some channels
Hah, same here. That Cave video was goddamn TENSE.
@@trevormcdonald385 Nexpo for internet horror stories/documentary
@@eisherz4711 cheers
@@trevormcdonald385 Lemmino makes good videos sorta documentaries
When I was backpacking through South America, I began hearing jokes and sayings about how Paraguay is where all the stolen cameras end up; I reunited with a Dutch friend in Buenos Aires who found her camera for sale in Ciudad del Este; she had it stolen in southern Brazil. The camera had an etched initial on it, and she bought it back like $50. It even managed to retain its lenses and lens-cap
So... if Apple just offered parts like normal instead of being so against right to repair, there wouldn't be a trafficking business for iPhone parts.
Wild.
IMO, not wild, obvious behaviour on the part of a corporation who's primary goal is to make profit. There was 1 person who gave a fuck about us at Apple, and he's been dead for a while now
This
@@lucasjames8281 This lol. why do yall think Apple are so vehemently against it? if theres demand, people will steal. when you have your phone stolen and unrecoverable, what do you do? you buy a new one, which inturn makes Apple money. A company as large as Apple is definitely aware that this is a problem and im gonna bet my 2 cents they like it.
They do offer parts.
@@ahappycoder2925 they only offer parts for their most recent models from the past few years anything older than that and you're pretty much out of luck it's the same with their laptops
ahh eBay, from high ranking people stalking and harassing someone who wrote a mean article, to allowing very obviously scalped items to be resold at insane prices, to this.
what a magical platform that i feel one day you'll cover
ruclips.net/user/PhoneFlipping101 here's that dick head's channel
I agree, barely sociable should cover the whole of Ebay's shitty business practices.
however
what in the wide wide world fuck is that profile picture????!
Not disagreeing that eBay has been sketch, but the ESN thing isn't part of that. eBay took the time to verify that the phones weren't stolen before offering advice. There is nothing wrong with guiding people who are wrongly hit by some sort of ban/block algorithm to avoid that, it shows compassion for the people who use the service and that's a good thing. Heck, this is exactly what the youtube community has been begging youtube for forever, to be more transparent on their rules and to actually help creators incorrectly targeted by it's content review AI. Helping it's users is what a company SHOULD be doing.
@@Jacqthepossposs :^ )
@@ImInForAWuppin ehhh idk? did they verify the phones the guy who contacted them have weren't stolen, or that each and every phone with a disabled ESN isn't stolen?
and the whole "don't put it in the title lol" is massively sketchy to me, is there any other instances of them saying to do this?
My brother worked at a recycling center and the amount of iphones and phone they had was insane alot of the recycling centers people would drop off theyre phones with all theyre info on it
He shouldve took some and sold them to China black market
@Funk he would keep some stuff for himself but everyone had theyre own business within the company lol some sold antenas, harddrives, others sold laptops , others sold cables lmao it was crazy my bro would give me all the videogames and consoles lol
@Funk and the crazy part is companys have to pay the electronic recycle centers to pick theyre shit up lmao.
My ex used to work at one of these shops and he used to take stuff all the time. One time he brought me a perfectly good laptop that I still have to this day
@@JUNIORC101 I love that, absolutely awesome! I’d be lying If I said I hadn’t collected my fair share of electronics through similar means.
Forever haunted by my phone being stolen at aftershock 2019. The phone is whatever but I’m still just heartbroken over all the photos I lost.
backup ur phone from time to time. after this video. im going to tell people to buy a burner phone to use for concerts. black friday
long ago one can be had for 10 bux
@@rocketsmall4547 the sad thing is this upset me so much I’ve essentially stopped taking photos, so now I don’t think there’s anything I’d miss anymore. Though it is best practice to backup every so often as well as just being generally more careful.
There's a saying in the computer technician world: "There are 2 types of people: those that back up their data and those who haven't lost anything yet."
I must be the luckiest man in the world. I’ve had a pair of sunglasses stolen at a music festival but never my phone. I actually lost it myself on two separate occasions and had it returned to me by strangers both times😅 It never occurred to me that the phone stealing is this organized
You should be very grateful, maybe take better care of your stuff
The vast majority of people at most festivals are not pieces of shit, but you still got lucky as hell. I wouldn't go for a 3rd try on that one lol.
That's actually very encouraging, I appreciate that wholesome other side of the story. :)
I've had people attempt to steal from me at gigs/festivals - but I don't keep my valuables in easy to reach pockets.
Scum they are, and just as quick as they have their hands in your pocket, they're gone.
A serial crowd surfer is quite often a theif, they pick the pocket, get boosted up on the crowd and drop the goods off to a mate at the side line.
Caught one little bastard doing it at the offspring gig a few months back.
I thought phone stealing is a thing of the past. Like I remember how sketchy the world was in 2011 in China, criminality, pollution, etc. But these days it's all bright clean and colorful, and phones are so ubiquitous that nobody steals them anymore, they're dirt cheap now. Everybody leaves phones on the restaurant table, at the bar, going to the bathroom at Starbucks, and nobody cares anymore.
Still waiting on part 2 of “The Music Industry’s Darkest Secret” I hope you weren’t “discouraged” from making it. That has the potential to be one of the most eye opening docs of the last 20 years if you truly expose what it seemed like you were going to expose.
I really want to see it too!
I can't get enough of Barely Sociable. Some of my favorite content on the platform!
same here
wholeheartedly agree. this was a pleasant surprise drop, kinda made my night..
@Don't Read My Profile Photo ok
No joke one of the best channels in this genre of videos, whatever its called. He does it with such seriousness and without sensationalism
My wife loves the name of the channel. LOL
Ebay preventing the listing from going up is such a stupid way to handle it! If they actually wanted to stop these sales (spoiler alert: they dont, it makes them boatloads of money in seller fees) they would secretly blacklist any listing that their filter hits
Well it's not really ebays problem, I think it's probably smarter to target the people actually stealing the phones as apposed to where they are sometimes sold
This! They do that for many, many products. I got out of selling on Ebay and one of the reasons was the ever-growing blacklist of products that you never know about unless you list the item and get flagged. It was annoying. But they definitely have ways of stopping specific items from being sold.
Why is ebay even relevant here?
@@23Butanedione
You talk and make excuses like a criminal.
Target the entire distribution chain, eventually you will drive up the costs of being a criminal and that always has an effect
@@GasPipeJimmy you talk like somebody ignorant of what large scale effect could come from sweeping decisions like banning things
Got mine stolen at Lollapalooza in 2021 and since then I’ve been very outspoken on this topic and have done my fair share of reasearch into this topic. Thank you BS for bringing this to light for more people. These people are scum
just get a new phone? outspoken about the trauma of having a phone stolen?? lol what???
@@ravennamedzebra you have no idea what it’s like to be alone in the city with 400k people with no phone to get home 30-40 mins away. Not about the phone as much as it is the shitty people who steal stuff that people work hard for dog
@@SpriteMaster214 I do know actually. I didn't have a phone the first 25 years of my life. Pay phones were the phones I had the option of and it was totally fine.
Theft is obviously not cool but it's nothing new. Phone trafficking is just a weird topic of conversation, this whole video is weird to me. Every stolen item has black market aside from personal use. And the idea that anyone would pay more than $100 for a phone is insane
@@ravennamedzebra I have a 2k$ phone because I use it for everything. Not all of us live in 2000 or qualify for a jitterbug cell phone plan
Makes we want to go to a music festival with a (perhaps leather lined) pocket full of rusty razor blades
My spacey self would forget the razors were there, and I'd cut myself. 100% chance.
Make sure they’re HIV+ as well
The absolute scumbaggery of saying "I'm going to buy this phone and sell this phone as if it's stolen, but since I didn't ASK if it was stolen, I didn't know they were stolen!" is insane
this entire video pretty much describes why I don’t go to events like this and when I’m dragged there by someone else I keep my stuff in my pockets under my hands the entire time.
I still can’t get over my phone being stolen from me at a busy mall the day after Christmas 3 years ago. This video was so interesting!
It also just reminded me of a shop I went to once that repaired phone screens and one dude there mentioned that he could bypass iCloud locked phones. That place didn’t last long 😅
There are more reasons to bypass that other than for stolen phones, I was once given an ipad 2 mini by my aunt who was a school vice principal and the device was hers from the previous year at school, so the original email and password were setup by the school tech, well I use it for like a year and a half just signed into my accounts once I got it, well one day I decided I wanted to reset the iPad so that it would be "custom" to me completely, well I forgot/didn't know to turn of the find my iphone before I initiated the reset, so once it reset and I turned it on one of the first few things it wanted from me were the original email and password it was setup under, well my aunt could t for the life of her remember the password and the tech guy was a different dude by then, so I had a only 3 year old ipad that I could not longer use, its still not been able to been used since which has always pissed me off
21:47
You said this right as I'm walking by my town centre. If I look around, there are 8 vape shops and 6 phone repair places. Given that their opening times are some of the weirdest shit you've ever seen, everyone just assumes something criminal goes on inside them lmao
Here in Germany even the smallest towns have (sometimes several!) "gambling halls". You know, not those fancy James Bond Las Vegas style casinos, more like arcades, but for gambling. Pretty ghetto. It's absolutely not possible that there's so much genuine demand for them. It's kinda an open secret that they're mainly used for cash money laundering. The people you see going in and coming out ALL look shady as fuck. And often they just hang out on the parking lot next to their black tuned Benzes, Audis, and BMWs for over an hour obviously waiting for "the man" to arrive. So if gambling is illegal where you live, they need other shops for that.
@@allesdurchprobiert Gambling halls in germany do make alot of money. mostly from older migrants.
the small "Handy!" shops are also not so involved in smartphone trafficing, they make their money with burner Sim cards.
Money laundering is doen the old fashioned way, with restaurants.
What do you have against vape shops 🤔
I just realized the vape shop I frequent has a phone repair shop next door.
@@allesdurchprobiert I think you don’t have a clue how many people have a serious gambling problem and spend in a hour every euro they made in a month. Even most newspapershops these days are mostly places where people come to gamble, this has nothing to do with something like this
This is crazy my phone was stolen back in late October and it was taken from me at a convenience store when my head turned for 2 seconds in Spokane Washington and ended in this spot this is crazy
2019 I was at rolling loud in a crowd. I kept my phone in my hand the whole time but others around me where not as smart. One guy all of the sudden goes “where’s my phone” then lake a wave at least 25 people around started panicking realizing they don’t have there phones either including my friend. A week later we got home and my friend decided to try and track the phone just for fun and it was in China crazy.
"not as smart"? who has to keep their phones in their hands? at a music festival? how can you call them "not as smart" for doing something the same way theyd always do it for over a decade? Like how were they to know there was a scum in the audience?
Bro how the fuck😂😂
@@geeker_0 it was wild lmao that’s why i have my phone in my hand at all times at festivals
@@ryanmurphy2089 Makes sense that they did it at a concert. There was definitely multiple people doing that too.
@@geeker_0 yeah it sounded like groups of teens would go to the most dense parts of the festivals and go ham
I'm very glad to be an introvert in cases like these
Same
they'll find a way to steal from you some other way.
I live in Brazil. In 2013 my ex-girlfriend got her then new iPhone 5S stolen on a bus. Months later her iCloud showed her phone at this area in Shenzhen too. Police staff said at the time said that it was happening for some years with others people stolen iPhones, eventually they showed up in Paraguay and then in mainland China. So it's happening for over a decade by now, at least for us in Latin America.
*Barely Sociable* is in the same league as *LEMMINO*
Excellent content as usual.
Better than by far, I think.
@@GarrettX001 not really. Lemmino has way better production values and polished scripts but Barely Sociable it's getting better with every video.
@@tomstonemale IMO production values and polished scripts aren't really the main deciding factors in what makes good content, it's just icing on the cake
@@bananawitchcraft I agree to an extent. It's more about the final product and the structure of the story and how it's told. Sometimes Barely Sociable has a very interesting topic but the conclusion is rushed for some reason and the payoff is lacking, like the Sakamoto video.
the other side of the problem is that these kind of smartphone locks create a ton of Ewaste when they can't be unlocked, it's kind of a lose lose scenario, the only thing i could think of is that locked phones could be sent to apple recycling centers with no money.
Especially because apple locks parts to the serial number of the iPhone that it was win
@@Bobspineable woosh
I would rather my device creates waste than a thief having easy access to my documents and photos, and profiting from selling my phone to others. android phones can easily be unlocked and sold but they still are the biggest sources of waste, so it's definitely not the locks that are the issues.
@@chromaticification Not a woosh bruh.
If phones reported stolen became unusable, no one would pay thieves for them, and thieves would no longer have a motive to steal them in the first place. Unfortunately the gangster state that is China won't make stolen phones unusable, so the market will continue to exist.
Stealing has been a problem at festivals and concerts for years, it's only in the past 10 years that people started carrying small rectangles worth $1000 so the problem is significantly more noticeable.
I almost got pickpocketed in London a while back. A woman walked up to me and grabbed my face and leaned in to kiss me and I shoved her off and immediately turned around because I knew what was happening. There was a guy right behind me who just said "She's crazy!" but was obviously with her. I told them to fuck off. Luckily I kept my wallet and phone in an undershirt fanny pack so even if they had gotten me I'd have nothing but a pound or 2 in my pockets
did you wake up after?
The undershirt fanny pack is a good idea, especially if your wearing layers
She was ugly or you’re gay it’s one of the two.
@@mattgoss3060 Nope, just don't like a stranger swapping spit with me while I'm walking down the sidewalk.
And what if I was gay? Is that a bad thing?
I’m a repair tech in Europe. I deal with this every day and we need to Clarify something here:
1. There are many legitimate reasons why a phone might be locked.
Examples: returned goods from customers (incredibly common), simply lost account details (elderly), shared devices, broken or recycled phones that didn’t get removed
2. The demand for stolen parts only exists because of Apple
- Apple is very anti repair. They sell just a few parts for a very very very high price, making it completely uneconomical to repair
- people still want repair, so they buy locked phones for parts
This issue would drastically change if Apple:
- stopped preventing repair
- started selling parts for a fair price
- implemented a lock that’s active, not passive. Right now it is always on when the device is erased. Instead it should be on for 60 days. During this time the owner can report it as stolen. If so it remains locked. If not, it gets removed and can be reused.
the phone flipper guy bragging about how much me makes selling stolen phones is gross.
As a former AT&T employee, I had a couple come in to open a business account using fake credentials on several occasions and I always wondered what they did with the phones!
likely they used the accounts for credit card fraud as most credit card companies will track the cell phone of these people if they get the information on the phones.
they then give the information to the feds.
the really dumb criminal use there home computers to do credit card fraud and are tracked by there IP address.
cell phone also have a type of IP address that can be tracked.
Since RUclips allows videos recruiting criminal activity, I suppose I'm also allowed to say: these crooks who are able-bodied for honest work yet prefer to steal from others, oftentimes coming unprossecuted, would benefit from a dose of popular justice when caught.
Selling genuine and legally obtained stuff on ebay is a pain but these stolen phone and laptop sellers seems to thrive on the platform. This is magnificent
I have been in the phone game for a while. I remember Serbia as being a sort of "Wild West" for various different types of illicit activity. However, one interesting thing of note is that every single one of those phones was an iPhone.
All of these bypasses, illicit activity and other schemes seem to radiate around Apple devices.
I suspect this has something to do with the facts that;
A: Apple refuses to sell parts to third parties.
B: Apple implemented the iCloud lock regardless of if the phone was actually stolen or the owner just forgot the password. Apple purposefully made it impossible to even wipe the phone without that password. It would've made sense if the phone could be reset with all data being erased without using a password (on the condition the device is not marked as stolen of course).
The above three points all apply to most Android devices.
This is why my phone is usually down the front of my shirt when I'm in crowds lol. Try and steal it and you can get in trouble for molestation AND theft at the same time!
Smart
Here in Brazil it's common sense to be very careful with our phones
Never walk with your phone in your hand or in a pocket that makes it exposed, especially at night, dark places or when there's no people in the street
If you have a backpack and you're in a place where there's lots of people use it on your chest, not your back
That's nice, but it excuses nothing in the video.
Good there is common sense in Brazil unlike America
True.
It may be 3 am but I can never resist clicking one of your videos. Looks like I won't be sleeping for at least another half hour
no sleep for at least another 34 minutes and 10 seconds
Night owl gang 😤
Night owl gang 😤
I clicked this video specifically because you made it, I didn't expect to be engaged with the topic that much but goddamn I keep underestimating you. Another banger, Mr. Sociable
Shocking how a non tech channel researched and shone lights on these issues. Hope the big tech channels covered these topics soon too!
I used to work in in the Genius Bar in one of the Apple Stores in NYC, as a technician.... its insane all the different schemes that we would encounter. We couldn't do a whole lot most of the time even though we knew these folks were "non end users" aka resellers.
What were some of the most popular ones you encountered? And also the less popular? I’d love to hear about all of it.
@@Dwall44I work for a major phone carrier and we get SO many requests to unlock iPhones from china. We decline all of them but it’s insane. I’ve had someone emailing me for the past 2 weeks and they’ve requested over 10 unlock codes for different blocked iPhone 13 Pro Max handsets.
Here in Tennessee as an ex addict, I’ve been in all of these situations. The cell phone. The donating plasma. Stealing TVs from Walmart. All of it. I once ran with a group of guys that were out of Detroit that did this in a decently large ring. Most of them are in prison or were in prison for a while. Edit: also yes they had an inside man at Verizon who would mark the devices as paid off.
How are phishing kits not referred to as “tackle boxes”??
Uploads at 2am. The man knows his audience.
As someone who had gotten my phone stolen at EDC LV (buried in my lumbar pack across my chest) it's quite frightening and disgusting how people manage to turn this into a lucrative business.
It is sad that in the original cellular phone model that a bad ESN would prevent any phone from working, but many cellular carriers chose to ignore the specifications of the original model and thus created the problem we see today.
When I was a drug addict, I knew a guy who had a list of random items like beat powder, vitamin supplements, diabetes testing machine, ect. Each item had a price next to it, which is how much you get for the item. So my friends and I would go around all day stealing these items to get money for fentanyl. The guy that would pay us the money for the items told us he gave the items to a Chinese guy that gave him cash for the items. I guess the guy was sending this stuff back to China. You can't imagine how many drug addicts are in stores around the USA right now shoplifting random health supplements from whole foods so they don't get dope sick. Im so glad I got hit by that car and was forced to stop doing drugs.
Happy you're off the fent my friend, it's a hard thing.
Me and my friends make sure narcan is distributed to local addicts, help them not get IV diseases, pick up needles, etc.
We help them get into reputable rehabs (there are many shady ones out here) when they want to try getting clean as well.
It's brutal living like that, one of em stole my bike once and broke down when I confronted him about it.
Ended up getting my bike back but people will do anything if it means avoiding withdrawals.
I find some phones when dumpster diving, which I may sell on eBay for scrap/parts, but I make it clear where I got the phone, what the IMEI says, etc.Some may be blacklisted, but most of the time they are just tossed out by the user for being broken or old. Of the ones that are blacklisted, the phone is fairly old or is cracked, broken, etc, so I assume people would only buy it to scrap it for parts or to repair them.
Tbf, I do not make much from them when I sell them, and they are just a small segment of what I sell. I also sell secondhand clothes, other electronics, and more. So it is not as if I make a living selling phones. When that happens, one does open themselves up for exploiting others. I also do not sell outside of the US for many reasons, and the idea of exploitation is one of them.
It is sad to me that so many phones are stolen for this purpose. Especially because so many people just throw their phones in the garbage... I have seen a great many Tracfone and flip phone in the dumpster, lol. Something nobody should do because it is considered toxic waste (Then again, I have removed more than one car battery from a neighborhood dumpster...).
This is definitly something caused by a combination of overinflated phone prices, planned obselecence, relative ease in getting replacements, and Capitalism as a whole encouraging such practices.
someone left a car engine by our dumpster. cuz he cant put it in.
You don’t think communism causes E-waste too?
Next you’re gonna say that I can’t dump hexavalent chromium in my neighborhood dumpster, smh
@@wolfetteplays8894 Are you so naive that you don’t identify the way capitalism has perforated the Chinese state? The state is a cancer.
My favorite mystery/horror I guess RUclipsrs to watch late night are nexpo, reignbot, barely sociable, nick crowley and ewu crime. I genuinely feel happy when these channels upload!
Used to work at a secondhand tech shop a couple of years ago, and it being a chain they were fairly strict on what they would buy in. The amount of people trying to sell phones with blocked accounts was always the same story (I forgot my pin/ I forgot my password/ I don't remember the email I used). Shadiest thing that happened was a guy who cleared our inventory of last gen consoles on a fairly regular basis to flip in the middle east (not too shady as we background checked serials on stuff as well as phone IMEIs) but a branch a couple towns over it was well known a guy would sell the manager a black sack of phones from time to time for dirt cheap.
There's a street in my town called 'smelly alley', it's no longer than 100 yards. There are 14 used phone/accessory/repair shops on that street, literally next to eachother. If that's not some kind of money laundering/fence racket then I don't know. The shops are seemingly always empty
FFS why are my replies to this keep getting deleted?!
Look up Union Street Reading phone shop. They list 11 in results but I've counted 14
They can't all be legit businesses
@Kris Fire RUclips tweaked its algorithms in recent months to target certain clusters of words that they don’t want people saying.
Not words that imply violence or curse words, just ordinary words you find in the dictionary.
I love that an impromptu video for Barely is over 30 minutes long
Great video, well done for researching and sharing info on this. It's super important. I recently bought a phone, and I did my best to make sure it was legit, but it's just so hard to know these days. So many scammers out there
My man just drops the best videos about topics that are super interesting
eBay needs to be looked into. I am 100% confident that the platform is more scam than legit these days, regardless of what items are being bought and sold. I recently was looking into getting a racing wheel to play Forza, and found a listing for a used one. I got outbid at the last moment, but a couple of days later, I got an email that it had been relisted. Exact same photographs of the item. Not stock photos, but actual pictures someone took of it on a table, on their carpet, detailed photos of scuff marks, etc. I watched it for a week, it sold, and then it showed up again a couple of days later. That wasn't the only item I saw like that. High-value items will get last-minute bids to drive up the price, and then they'll show up again after they're sold. Sometimes, it'll be a different seller relisting them. It makes no sense to me because eBay is supposed to crack down on false bidding and these aren't new sellers, they have hundreds of positive feedback ratings.
Barely Socialable should do a video on this lol!!!
There is no way eBay is going to pay millions of dollars to additional employees to enforce this stuff. Maybe when eBay first started but it is to massive now.
no one gonna talk about the transition into the ad read? Clean as hell
11:02 most apple store managers make about 60k a year doing way too much work and way too much responsibilities for only that little, so I can definitely imagine that the trafficking ring bribing one
Hey man 60k a year is pretty comfortable when I'm at. People around here spend decades breaking their bodies in factories for a lot less.
*stares at phone suspiciously*
So your phone is made in China, shipped to wherever, bought by you, stolen by someone and then taken back to China. It all comes full circle 😂
It's 2 in the morning. Let's watch some barely sociable.
Saw the notification, and I instantly got a big grin on my face :) The GOAT is back!!!
That ad segway deserves a medal.
Was Just served an eBay ad after watching to the end of this video, amazing
the whole get rich quick section of youtube needs some serious policing
I keep my phone in my front pocket at all times, unless it's in my hands, which makes it a little more difficult to steal it. Of course some people don't have pockets on their clothes (which lots of people hate and think should change) so that's not always something you can do. Only time I had my phone stolen I got mugged.
That has changed. You just need to actually buy the pants with pockets. No one's stopping anyone, it's 100% an issue of consumer behaviour.
@@NotSure109 no it's not lmao people being careless doesn't put the responsibility of entire fucking crime rings on them.
@@avelynn5976 I don't disagree, I never said otherwise.
Your actually a person with a brain.
babe wake up , barely sociable just dropped a new video .
Awesome work. BTW, small note - The 'ars' in ars technica isn't an acronym, it's pronounced like 'aars'. It's a play on a french phrase, ars poetica.
I had written a comment almost word for word about the second hand retailers about 5 minutes before you said it. I worked at a store that was second hand and we for sure bought in plenty of brand new items that were obviously stolen and also had a large number of blacklisted phones, and account locked devices. Some of them we would be able to send off and get the locks removed.
I mainly worked in the backroom for pricing. It's definitely a scummy business but I was 19.
Who cares? They’re sticking it to the man. The rich don’t play fair either, so why should we?
This problem is ridiculous. Thanks for covering
"a half dozen people" makes it sound like a lot, but it's really just 6 people in a crowd of thousands.
This video takes me back to when I worked at a pawn shop. Vast majority of cell phones we sold were on eBay and had “bad esn” or something to that effect in the title.
One thing that seemed to be missing from this is what bad IMEI/ESM phones can be used for. Offhand, I can think of one thing: assembling them into a sort of "botnet" to use for bulk-numbers of streams (for a price) on Spotify and other services. I could be wrong on this one, however.
Yep! This too
A consumer can also just use them as a wifi device.
@@Kaixfikwind: Yeah, a while ago someone made a video about basically using a IMEI blacklisted phone as a Wi-Fi based device. At least in my case, I could get quite a bit of use out of a smartphone without the cellular connection, though I'm not planning on getting one of these ones any time soon 🤣
Just imagine if Apple stealing the old phones to make people buy new iphones. 💀
When an iPhone is reported as lost, even if you force a factory reset using an exploit, certain hardware components like the modem will still not work without authentification from apple's servers for the specific phone, handicapping its usefulness. This is why they have to spam you.
You're getting 2 different things confused. A phone that is reported as lost (bad esn/imei) will work just fine in every capacity aside from being able to be receive service from the carrier it was reported with. Apple servers have nothing to do with that. In fact, if a phone is carrier unlocked and gets blocked on say Verizon, you can still use it on any other carrier just fine. Hell, even if the phone is carrier locked to say ATT, you can still use it with MNVO's that use ATT towers such as Cricket etc. And even a step further, overseas services will work just fine as the database only pertains to US only. Apple's servers literally have no hand in ESN/IMEI whatsoever. What they are spamming you about is if your phone is iCloud locked. They are trying to phish your iCloud info so they can remove it from the phone. THIS is where Apple servers come into play. iCloud and Lost/Stolen are 2 completely different beasts.
@@stillthebody-movethemind6346 I'm not talking about carrier locks at all. When your phone is reported as lost it becomes iCloud locked and this locks up the (software but you can bypass that and) hardware. At the apple servers your phone is identified through IMEI and other files/certificates, which is why the phone is mostly useless unless you sell it for parts.
@@dasgettopikachu7878 reporting a phone as lost does not iCloud lock your phone. You have to manually setup icloud lock yourself. If you have an iCloud lock ON and report the iCLOUD as lost/stolen, it can erase the phone after too many failed password attempts and return to the "home screen", in which you cannot progress past the setup screens with the password. Again ONLY if you setup your iCloud to do so. Regardless if you report it lost or not, you either have the iCloud on or off. It does not get magically turned on. If you do not have icloud on and you report it lost you will just get no Cellular service.
this is exactly the type of underground ongoing topic I'm interested in seeing if you stumble on any more rabbit holes please keep em coming underground criminal enterprises are absolutely mind boggling to me and so fascinating to learn about.
Not me checking to make sure no one stole my phone while watching this on my phone
The IMEI information was enlightening but as also with new knowledge, left me feeling stupid! I’ve had phones that I couldn’t pay on that people could have stolen or I could have sold and would have probably wound up in China with all my information stolen or hacked. Thankful for this! I’m not selling any of my phones 😮
What a coincidence! Last night I was rewatching all your videos and hoping another one would release soon. I open youtube this morning and see this!
11 hours Sleep deprived and I'm still staying up to watch this
It makes one want to rig a cellphone to catch fire and get it stolen on purpose. Then flip the switch when it gets to its destination.
Do it
Lets collab i am broke and need supplies.
I love how people appreciate the quality of these videos in the comments. Truly wholesome. ❤️
I wonder how many of the stolen phones had active tik tok account. It can be scary how some people can find just from your posts and check in locations. Honestly I think it would be extremely easy at a loud music festival, just search hashtages and scroll through pictures. You can see were the groups of people are shoulder to shoulder. You would have a map just like a video game and choose targets.
A hacker has my old TikTok and changed all the otw and now I can’t get into it
Another factor that you forgot is that carriers in some countries don't blacklist stolen bad esn or blacklisted imei numbers on their networks because they are fighting and scrambling for subscribers so if a phone is blacklisted or reported stolen on one network it will work on another network in the same country because the network carrier wants to increase their subscriber numbers so it just boils down to profits you don't even have to export the phone to another country you just switch networks. I have lost so many phones over the years to theft.
Mine got picket at Aftershock Festival in Sacramento, California. At the end of the night I ran into dozens of other people looking for their phones. And this was at least 5 or 6 years ago.
Oh man, now I'm worried because im going this week lmao
When my iPhone 6 was stolen I was devasted but I’m glad they are getting caught
Also, I wonder if this could be why iPhone parts are serialized. It all comes back around to the thieves and scammers, they make everything consumer and repair unfriendly. I wonder how they deal with the serialized parts in modern iPhones.
And when the world needed him, Barely Sociable returned...
Enjoyed the video as always.
The eBay issue seems a bit fuzzy. If it's "bad ESN" but NOT "iCloud Locked", should we assume it's stolen? Maybe, but that wasn't clear to me. eBay's ban on putting it in the title certainly seems to imply that, but I'm not convinced enough to take it for granted.
It’s a safe bet to assume it’s EITHER Stolen or lost. These “bad esn” phones are reported as lost or stolen most often, the guys selling these on eBay are kinda scummy imo. It might not be illegal but in the very least you have to be ok with likely selling peoples phones that they will never see again. And are likely still being paid for. The majority of iPhones legitimately procured are through contracts. The seller in the video seems like kind of a scum bag, he’s admitting to knowing his phones are probably illegally obtained but will still sell it.
Bro that was the smoothest fricking sponsorship if I ever seen one. 😂