alt Hacker NewsMy understanding is there was a bug that let you wipe and re-enable a phone that had been disabled due to theft. This prevents a downgrade attack. It's in OnePlus's interest to make their phones less appealing for theft, or, in their interest to comply with requirements to be disableable from carriers, Google, etc.
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Make perfect sense, Thanks kind stranger. Hope it is the reason and not some corporate greed. It on me, lately my thoughts are defaulted towards corporates sabotaging consumers. I need to work on it.
The effects on custom os community is causing me worried ( I am still rocking my oneplus 7t with crdroid and oneplus used to most geek friendly) Now I am wondering if there are other ways they could achieved the same without blowing a fuse or be more transparent about this.
> My understanding is there was a bug that let you wipe and re-enable a phone that had been disabled due to theft. This prevents a downgrade attack.
This makes sense and much less dystopia than some of the other commenters are suggesting.
> It's in OnePlus's interest to make their phones less appealing for theft,
I don't believe for a second that this benefits phone owners in any way. A thief is not going to sit there and do research on your phone model before he steals it. He's going to steal whatever he can and then figure out what to do with it.
Carriers can check a registry of stolen phone IMEIs and block them from their networks.