Last February I wrote a post about how you could find your stolen iPod’s serial number in iTunes. By running a diagnostic check from within iTunes you would see “last connected iPod serial number”. Cool, you had it and now you could report that number to the police, submit it to a registry like Stolen911.com , place a craigslist ad, whatever. I re-posted the same information here on The Stolen iPod earlier this month on Sept. 15th. I did not think to re-check if it still worked. I had no reason to believe apple would remove this feature. Silly me, last night after checking my Windows iTunes software, my friends, my other friends, its gone. Evidently all versions of iTunes 7 have removed the ability to view the iPods serial number when its not connected. Hopefully you still have your receipt, box, or wrote it down. So why would Apple do this?
Richie Murray wrote,
A sceptic might think that the Apple iTunes store wishes to avoid acquiring any information that could potentially involve it in the identification of the use of, and subsequent recovery of, stolen Apple iPods. If the iTunes software doesn’t store iPod serial numbers or transmit them to the iTunes store then Apple can claim that it can’t detect the use of iPods that have been reported as stolen.
Link | November 14th, 2007 at 2:45 am
andrea wrote,
My sons ipod was stolen from school and I know that you have a tracking system that can find them. Or at least not let them use it on I tunes. Just enable the ipod. Please we pay lots of money for these products the least you could do is enable the person from using it on i tunes
Link | December 19th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Ninjikiran wrote,
They dont want your stolen ipod to be found, they rather you buy a new one. Its simple to have one tracking system that sends the ipod owner an e-mail when a new itunes account is trying to login to Itunes with your ipods serial. If it is fradulent then you can contact the proper authorities who can use the information on the account and/or ip address signatures to restore a stolen Ipod to its rightful owner but why should they scare when people will just keep buying them. Kind of sickening, and sure most of the people who get tracked down would of probally bought it offa a street vendor so they can get away without any charges which is ok, they got ripped off also when they loose the momney they payed for it.
Link | February 28th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Mathew wrote,
You can still get the serial number of the last connected iPod. Directions are at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60978#one .
From the site:
In iTunes 7.6 or later
1. Hold down the Control key and choose Help > About iTunes (Windows) or iTunes > About iTunes (Mac).
2. Release the Control key.
3. As the iTunes and QuickTime version information scrolls, you will see the last connected iPhone’s serial number and IMEI ad iPod’s serial number.
Link | March 5th, 2008 at 7:34 pm