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VedicMonk Author

Level 1

8 points

Find My... Apple ID still associated with previous owner of Mac mini

I bought a Mac Mini on eBay months ago. The previous owner had restored the system to a clean copy of Catalina.

So I put my own Apple ID in, and migrate all my data from an older mini using Migration Assistant, and everything gets set up like a new machine. Nice.

Then I updated MacOS with a new system update today. After it rebooted and before it came to the log-in screen, it says this machine is associated with the previous owner's "Find Me" Apple ID as well as iCloud items and whatever. Apparently the previous owner didn't properly sign out of everything (or anything) before wiping the data. And it shows his em**l ad**ess which is, of course, unreadable.

I can send a snail mail to the previous owner since it's on the shipping box, but what can the previous owner do about the situation when the system has already been wiped and the machine is now here? Am I stuck with this machine being identified as still associated with his Apple ID??? There MUST be a way, right???? Apple MUST have thought of an easy solution to this seemingly very common problem, considering the multitude of posts about similar cases with various devices.

Posted on Oct 14, 2020 4:04 PM

Top-ranking reply

FoxFifth

Level 10

472,227 points

Posted on Oct 14, 2020 4:09 PM

Have the previous owner perform the following steps from Turn off Activation Lock - Apple Support

Backup your data first.

If the previous owner isn't present, contact them and ask them to follow these steps:

Sign in to iCloud.com with their Apple ID.
Go to Find My iPhone.
Click All Devices at the top of the screen.
Select the device that you want to remove from iCloud.
Click Erase [device]. Select Next until the device is erased.
Click Remove from Account.

After the previous owner removes the device from their account, turn off the device and then turn it back on to begin the setup process.

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Find My... Apple ID still associated with previous owner of Mac mini

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