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Let's get into these rioters and protesters -- actually -- they are thieves and how Apple and Big Tech is figuring out just who they are.

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iPhone looters find devices disabled, with a warning they’re being tracked

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We've seen the pictures of looters on TV, heard about them here on the radio. How can you know, if what you're buying online is a stolen good or not? We're going to talk about that. And the iPhone debacle,

[00:00:19] you are listening to Craig Peter Sohn. We're here every week. You'll find me online@craigpeterson.com. And if you do sign up for my emails, You'll get some amazing content. We're, I'm going through handpicked articles that I share with you. These are curated out of hundreds of thousands of articles that are published every week.

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[00:01:15] So. Greg peterson.com/subscribe. Hey, let's get into what's happening right now with these looters. My gosh, how can you protect yourself? I've seen so many businesses that have been ransacked now, right? Pictures of them from all across the country and from around the world. Now, it's really interesting to see them talking about black lives matter and how the police are going after people and killing them in countries like.

[00:01:47] Great Britain where they are not even armed for the most part. Right. And there has not been the number of problems who've seen here in the United States. Now, of course, their population is a whole lot smaller than our population is as well. But when you boil down into the numbers, I think you'll see a bit of a different story.

[00:02:07] But part of the story that I want to talk about is the technology side, many of the. Apple stores were ransacked and the bad guys, the looters. I stole iPads and iPhones, and basically anything that they could get that wasn't nailed down. And even then they managed to get some of this stuff nailed down from some of these other high-end stores.

[00:02:32] So in response, some of these stores such as Apple target, as well as the real big guys, like the Gucci's and Rolexes of the world. They shut their stores down, thus hurting the neighborhoods that the stores are located in the people working there. Obviously they don't have a job if that store's been burned to the ground has happened too many times.

[00:02:56] And they also. Don't have a place to shop. You know, there's been talk over the last governor, what 20 years about having these food deserts, where there was no place to get fresh food. And I'm really worried that ultimately. These places where we had the riot are going to end up being just like these food deserts that we're trying to get rid of.

[00:03:23] Why would I spend money to reopen my store when my insurance won't even pay for it? And I'm afraid of looters coming in in the future? Well, Apple had a solution for this and still has a solution for it. All of the devices that are in the Apple stores run as a special version of their operating system and that operating system makes it so that the device will not work.

[00:03:51] If removed from the Apple store. So some of these brain trust people that have been looting, these stores took pictures of the screens of those eye iPhones. They stole complaining, Oh my gosh, here. Look at this, and there's a message on there. Now, the one that we've been seeing the most that was posted on Twitter said, please return to Apple Walnut street.

[00:04:19] This device has been disabled and is being tracked. Local authorities will be alerted. Now I mentioned this week, while I was on the radio. On a number of different stations during drive time. And I want to go further than that right now, since we have a few more minutes than, than just the five to 10 minutes I get during drive time, you know, we don't know how many I-phones have been taken from the Apple stores and put into circulation.

[00:04:46] We do know that Apple iPhones if they are stolen, and if they have "Find My iPhone" turned on. Are very difficult for thieves to really make bank on those phones. However, can be taken apart and use for parts and used by these little guys and bigger ones too, that repair the devices. So they will pay.

[00:05:12] Someone for a broken or even a pretty well-working iPhone or iPad. And we'll, we will remove the buttons. If there are buttons on, it depends on how old it is. All of the sensors, the screens, everything, and then use them for repairs. So even though the phones were stolen and Apple has made sure that the phone will not work outside the store, That phone is still worth something.

[00:05:41] So I want you to keep that in mind too if you have an Android or an iPhone and it is set to South flock and with the iPhone, you cannot erase it either and it's to reset it and then reuse it. Remember that they still are worth something. So don't be cavalier with that iPhone. When you take it out of the store, they also have this it's, it's kind of a kill switch, frankly, here.

[00:06:08] Now they are also reporting some of these stolen phone locations. To law enforcement, which I think is pretty darn cool because then they can catch the bad guys. And we've seen cases in the past where someone's phone was stolen. They used "Find my iPhone" to locate that phone. And then they went to the police and said, Hey, my phone was stolen.

[00:06:34] And here's the location it's at. And then the police using probable cause went to that residence. And in many cases did find the device and arrested the people for possession of stolen merchandise. So I would expect some of that to happen here. Although I think Apple's trying to stay out of this as much as they can.

[00:06:57] Because they consider this to be a political issue. Now, how can you tell if something that you want to buy has been stolen while there are some pretty basic things that you can look for to try and determine if your item has been stolen? The first off is that the price of the item is just totally unreasonable.

[00:07:22] No, I don't mean it's expensive. I mean, wow. That's cheap a couple of years ago I needed to replace my pickup truck. And so I went online and we did a lot of research. You can, you can probably guess what I'm like when it comes to this. Right. So pretty thorough research. We found the exact truck that we wanted and it was a.

[00:07:46] About a 10-year-old. I think it was an F two 50 diesel with this diesel engine that just lasts forever. It's just absolutely amazing. And we found online one of those Ford trucks that were available. And the price was wonderful. We're trying to figure out why. And so we contacted the seller who said, well, Jess got mobilized, have to go over to Afghanistan and need to get rid of the truck because they were making payments on it before they left.

[00:08:18] And I figured, okay, well, that's a reasonable enough explanation. So, what I did is I then took the picture that they had posted online. This was on eBay and I went to Google. Now, if you are not familiar with this, it something you should look at. Google has an image search feature. And that image search feature allows you to upload an image or give Google the URL of an image.

[00:08:50] So I gave it this image that they had posted of that pickup truck. And I asked Google to see if it could find it online. Sure enough, it found it, it did find it in that eBay ad that I mentioned that we had found the truck in, but it also found the same truck on a dealer's lot. And of course, the price was much higher.

[00:09:14] I think that the bad guys are trying to sell it. If I remember right for five or six grand and the dealer was trying to sell it for 20 grand. So it started to smell bad because the price was just too low. When I did some research by going to Google, uploading the image, and having Google tell me if that image was used elsewhere.

[00:09:36] I was able to solve that mystery. The next thing to look for is a warning sign for stolen items is missing or inaccurate product details, misspellings, bad grammar. That's a very, very common thing. The graphics just don't look quite right. Like they were using a real cheap imitation of Photoshop in order to edit some of those pictures together.

[00:10:04] And then. An unknown seller. Now, eBay is great in this respect because you can see how long that seller has been on eBay. You can see how many items they've sold. You can see what their ratings are. You can pull all of this together. So those are our top tips here for looking for stolen items. Some of these are going to be hard to find, for instance, if you've got this wonderful Gucci bag or rather piece of clothing, Just looking for that picture online does not mean it is stolen if they're using a stock picture that might come from the Gucci site or the clothing site.

[00:10:44] Right. So that's not necessarily a dead giveaway, but it does mean you should look a little further because if you're buying used clothing, you expect a photo to have been taken. By that person's smartphone and then uploaded from there. And if you really want to dig into it, that photo probably has the GPS coordinates of where that photo was taken.

[00:11:09] What type of device took that photo and just kind of add those numbers up. But many of these sites, like The Real-Real, If you haven't checked them out, you really should. Yeah, but The Real Real has all kinds of great high-end clothes available for a very cheap price. Some of these clothes have never been worn and they're telling us that they are keeping a very close eye looking out for stolen goods, for signs of stolen goods.

[00:11:41] So sites like that, I think you'll be able to trust more than maybe an eBay. Who does try and police us, but they can't be a hundred percent successful. Amazon's kind of in the same boat have for the items on Amazon are not sold and fulfilled by Amazon. They're sold and fulfilled by. Third parties. So keep your eyes out when you are looking for some of these great deals online, because they might've come from the looters out in LA, Boston, Illinois, who knows where, Hey, when we come back, we're going to talk about some of the security requirements that are in place now.

[00:12:26] We're working from home. We're getting back in the office. If you are a government contractor or subcontractor, the government's really going to come down on you. And we're going to talk about that. What does that all mean? How is that protecting us as citizens and as taxpayers, make sure you get my weekly email, find out what's going on.

[00:12:48] Craig peterson.com/subscribe, stick around because I'll be right back.

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Welcome! Looters, Thieves, Rioters, Protesters, Big Tech, Geo-Code, Device Finder and more on Tech Talk with Craig Peterson on WGAN 13:01 Share

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Welcome! Looters, Thieves, Rioters, Protesters, Big Tech, Geo-Code, Device Finder and more on Tech Talk with Craig Peterson on WGAN