IMEI Change for iPhones – Law and Technological Points
IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) numbers are the unique identification code Apple uses for every iPhone. It is important to not overlook the legal, technical and warranty consequences of altering an IMEI number.
What will happen if you change IMEI, Legal aspects
In many jurisdictions it is illegal to change the IMEI of a device especially if it was reported stolen. The practice is often done with the hope of obscuring the device’s identity in order to make it harder for law enforcement to do things like tracking stolen goods. Doing so could have serious legal ramifications, such as fines or jail time.
Technical Specifications and Device Flexibility
Jailbreaking an iPhone give users more power over what they can do with their own devices and may even offer possible routes of changing the IMEI. Though, jailbreaking comes with all kinds of risks — you void warranties and open yourself up to security holes.
Usually, you can only change an iPhone IMEI number if Apple allows it and not just by using technical tools. Of course, as with anything like this, users would be smart not to mess with it until their warranty runs out or a custom solution is available — since if you go digging into the chassis internals and something goes wonky later on down the line there’s just no telling what kind of service and support fallout there might be.
Warranty and Support Details
All Apple devices have a warranty that covers hardware and software problems. Anything that changes the IMEI can technically invalidate Apple’s warranty for ownership and repair, which means that you lose the right to have many repairs made at an Apple center without having to be paid. Users may want to consider the risk of losing their warranty if they change anything on their device.IMEI (ad)
Therefore, despite it technically being possible under certain terms, changing the IMEI of an iPhone opens up many legal and technical issues you must take into account.