Getting Your iPhone Repaired Could Ban You From Snapchat

Repairs for smartphones, tablets, and other devices still aren’t as simple as they should be. Case in point: getting your iPhone repaired under warranty could ban you from Snapchat and other services.

In a bizarre turn of events, a repair of a cracked iPhone under AppleCare seems to have led to a Snapchat ban of said device. After dropping his phone and getting it replaced at an Apple Authorized Service Provider, Finn Voorheess was surprised to discover the replacement phone was banned from Snapchat due to alleged violations of the company’s Community Guidelines.

Finn suspected the replacement was a refurbished device, with the previous owner potentially responsible for the ban. Snapchat’s support was unhelpful, stating that device bans couldn’t be lifted. Further investigation revealed the potential culprit: Apple’s DeviceCheck framework, which allows developers to store data that persists even after factory resets or device transfers. Apple doesn’t wipe this registry following repairs, and the company’s support agents, while understanding, offered to replace the phone again but couldn’t address the root cause of the problem.

The incident highlights a potential flaw in Apple’s refurbishment process, as devices aren’t fully restored to a ‘new’ state, potentially carrying over restrictions from previous users. Snapchat certainly shouldn’t be misusing this feature, but if a refurbished device should behave the same as a new phone, then that’s also on Apple. The company definitely has the ability to wipe this data and glosses it over.

Apple urges developers to not use DeviceCheck for anything beyond basic device verification, and if you’re a developer that’s also misusing it, then you should definitely cease that—there are probably more reliable ways to check whether it’s the same user trying to access an account from a device or not. We’ve reached out to Snapchat for a statement, and we will update this article if we hear back.

Source: Finn Voorhees via Six Colors