PSA: Don't meet random people you find on Snapchat to sell an iPhone

Iphone Se 2020 Hero
Iphone Se 2020 Hero (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • A 16-year-old met someone on Snapchat and met up to sell an iPhone.
  • When inspecting the iPhone, the man got into a car and drove off.
  • He got away despite two teens jumping on the car.

This might not be Apple news as such, but sometimes a tale of woe is needed to save other people from making bad decisions. Case in point – a teenager had her iPhone stolen after she met up with a random person she found on Snapchat. She was trying to sell the iPhone, according to a report.

Local news reports Lincoln Police were called after a 16-year-old had her iPhone stolen when she met someone she had found on Snapchat. The meeting was supposed to facilitate the sale of that iPhone, but things went south when it was handed over to the buyer so he could check it over.

The teen told police when the man arrived, there were three other people in the car with him. She handed the phone to the man to look at and he jumped back into the car and started to take off. The victim and a 15 year old friend jumped on to the vehicle as it took off. Both were eventually thrown from the vehicle and hit the pavement. Neither were seriously hurt and did not receive treatment for injuries.

The good news here is that nobody was injured because this could have gone very wrong indeed. And even though the teen was right to take two friends with her, she should probably have never been there in the first place. Selling anything via Snapchat doesn't strike me as anything but a recipe for disaster. Or am I just old?

Again, and thankfully, nobody got seriously hurt. Hopefully the iPhone will be recovered and this story will prevent someone else from having their iPhone stolen – or worse – in a similar fashion.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.