Congrats on buying a used iPhone! You’ve anxiously awaited its arrival, checked it for external damage, and now the next step is to activate it. The only problem is, you can’t! If you’re facing a lock screen that says “This iPhone was lost and erased,” the phone won’t let you complete the setup and activation process without entering the original user’s Apple ID and password, information that you clearly don’t have. So what’s the next step to activate your used iPhone?
First, let’s talk about what that lock screen error means. It’s an indicator that Activation Lock is activated on the phone. This is an anti-theft feature that Apple integrated into all of their phones and tablets in recent years, and it’s part of Find My iPhone. If you activate Find My iPhone on your phone, you can remotely wipe the phone from a distance if you’ve lost it and want to prevent your sensitive data from getting accessed.The only problem is un-savvy iPhone sellers use Activation Lock as an erasure shortcut when prepping phones for sale, without realizing that the buyer is rendered unable to use their new phone. Alternately, the seller could have forgotten to erase the phone altogether before sale, and used Find My iPhone to wipe it once it was in your possession.The third possibility is that the phone could actually be stolen and resold. To rule this out, check the IMEI number with a diagnostic app like PhoneCheck. If it’s clean, then the phone isn’t stolen, and you can proceed with removing Activation Lock without guilt.
Unfortunately, you do need the cooperation of the seller to remove Activation Lock, regardless of how it got there. The easiest way is to contact him and simply explain the situation. He may agree to change his Apple ID password to a temporary one and share it with you so you can login and turn off the lock, or if you’re local he might want to meet up and enter his password himself. Once it’s done, you can restart the phone and start the regular activation process from scratch.
If the seller isn’t willing to meet up or to share his login information, you can ask him to remove the lock via iCloud. All he needs to do is login to iCloud using another device, click Find My Device, select your device, and choose Remove From Account. Just like that, the Activation Lock on your phone will disappear. You may have to force-restart it by holding down the power button, but you should be able to access it without trouble now.
If you try to activate your phone only to be confronted with a regular passcode lock screen, your seller probably forgot to erase the phone altogether. You can either meet up with the seller or ask him to share the passcode, upon which you’ll need to go to Settings > General > Reset > Erase and it will completely reset the phone.If he’s not comfortable meeting up or sharing the passcode, have him log into iCloud, click All Devices, and click Erase iPhone, which renders it ready for you to activate.Don’t write your new used phone off as unusable just because you’re stuck on an Activation Lock screen. Let PhoneCheck confirm that the phone isn’t stolen first, and then follow these simple steps to activate your used iPhone and get started!
