Have you bought an iPhone that happens to be locked? Be aware to distinguish iCloud activation locking from the locking of your iPhone by the carrier. When you buy a used iPhone, it may be locked by it’s initial carrier. In this case, you will be not be able to use it with a SIM card from a different network. Similarly, your used iPhone could be iCloud locked: the steps for unlocking it are not the same.
Unlocking your iPhone: what is it and how to do it?
If you bought an iPhone from an individual or a reseller and it shows an error message when you put your SIM card in, it means, quite simply, that your iPhone is locked to a different carrier than yours. Thus, the only solution is to ask the previous owner to make the unlock request through their carrier, or, if you cannot contact the old owner, to simply use our paid service to unlock your iPhone, for under $25.
Unlock iCloud activation iphone VS. simlock removal
Make the difference: carrier-locked iPhone vs iCloud-locked iPhone. To make it simple, when buying a used iPhone, the owner must absolutely deactivate the “Find my iPhone” function in the settings before selling it. In the case that it’s not deactivated, it will be unusable as long as the real owner doesn’t delete the iPhone from his/her iCloud account. It is the same if you found an iPhone and the person declared the phone lost via their iCloud account. You will not be able to unlock it.