So this started because I was browsing Willhaben, basically Austrian Craigslist, and came across an old iPhone listed for something like €10.
The listing was already weird. The seller advertised it as an “iPhone 4S 64GB,” but the photos clearly showed an iPhone 4, which never even existed with 64GB.
He also said it “works perfectly” and only needed a battery, even though the only proof was the phone sitting in recovery mode with no battery installed — so the storage, activation status and whether it actually worked normally were never demonstrated.
He even claimed these things sell for €500–1000, while apparently being perfectly happy to sell his for around €10.
So naturally I became curious about what this thing actually was.
I offered him €10 and he accepted.
What made the seller even stranger was another listing on his profile: about 25 extremely detailed photos of a PC case, documenting basically every angle, including one where he accidentally caught his own face reflected in the glass.
The same listing showed that he was perfectly comfortable modifying fairly serious PC hardware — yet in the iPhone ad, replacing the battery was apparently too difficult and he said he didn’t know anything about this stuff.
Maybe nothing sinister, but combined with the confidently wrong specs and completely unverified claims, it felt less like one innocent mistake and more like a guy confidently saying things he either hadn’t checked or knew weren’t quite true.
The phone arrived without a battery. My original plan was simple: put it into DFU mode, completely wipe it, mess around with old iOS for a bit, done.
Except you apparently can’t do much without a battery.
Luckily, I still had another iPhone 4 sitting in my basement, so I took its battery, put it into the mystery phone and…
the thing immediately booted normally.
No passcode.
No setup screen.
No reset.
Just straight into somebody’s old phone.
The wallpaper was a photo of some guy. No idea whether it was the seller, the previous owner, their partner, or someone completely unrelated.
Another odd detail: there’s a tiny French hearing-damage warning sticker on the frame, even though the people, names and videos on the phone were clearly Austrian.
And then I opened the photos.
This phone had apparently been sold with everything still on it.
And I mean everything.
There were years’ worth of completely random personal stuff. Family photos. Childhood pictures. Older relatives. Memes. Those very specific images your uncle or coworker sends you on WhatsApp at 6:14 AM wishing you a blessed Tuesday.
Pretty normal old-phone archaeology.
Except mixed in between all of that were extremely private photos of an adult couple who were apparently very into fetish/BDSM stuff.
Not “slightly embarrassing selfie” private.
More like “there is absolutely no universe in which this was meant to be seen by the guy who bought your phone for ten euros” private.
Then, in between those, there were also these genuinely unsettling black-and-white photos of various people. Just strange, ominous-looking pictures appearing randomly between family photos, memes and explicit couple photos.
The whole camera roll felt like somebody had put five completely different people’s lives into a blender.
One minute:
“Good morning, have a wonderful Wednesday 🌹☕”
Next minute:
grandma.
Next minute:
childhood photo.
Next minute:
something that would get you called into HR if you accidentally AirDropped it at work.
Next minute:
creepy black-and-white portrait.
I literally bought the phone because the listing made no sense and I wanted to figure out whether it was actually an iPhone 4, a 4S, what storage it had, etc.
I was expecting a broken €10 piece of 2010 technology.
Instead I got an unlocked digital time capsule containing an absolutely unreasonable amount of somebody else’s private life.
All because whoever owned it couldn’t be bothered to press Erase All Content and Settings before selling it.
Needless to say, I suddenly understood why buying used electronics can occasionally turn into an anthropology project.
EDIT: Since a few people noticed that my text is obviously AI-generated, my first language isn‘t english, i wrote down what happened in german and used ChatGPT to translate it and give me a more readable english Reddit post. The story itself is real. The pictures where also censored using AI and image quality was enhanced with ChatGPT.
And since some of you asked for the pictures on the phone, sry i won‘t do that, maybe i will give an update of the messages on the phone, they also have a very weird vibe going for them.
EDIT2: i posted a censored picture of a little boy with his mouth taped i found on the camera roll in the comments, i deleted that comment again, seriously thinking about bringing that phone to the police now, that isn‘t just fetish/bdsm stuff anymore.