Apple removed serial numbers of iPods in iTunes
Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 11:12AM 
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?
Reader Comments (54)
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.
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
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.
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.
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well.
I've tried everything on this website and still nothing i called apple and they said they cant give the serial numbers of all the ipods registered in my name wth what should i do
Matthew is right.
And if you find that it is scrolling too fast, hold on the option/alt key to reverse the direction.
Apparently apple is willing to track down its stolen computers. Some computers were stolen from a store and when apple had someone call who was shopping on ebay and ask if the computer was legitimate apple knew it was one of the computers from the store and called the police who found and arrested the thieves.
Does apple have a different policy for computers than ipods or a different policy for items taken diretly from a store as opposed to from a private person?
Apparently store owners know all the serail numbers of the comps they are selling. Why dont store owners know the serial numbers of the ipods they sell? Or do they?
And how did the woman shopping on ebay know what the serial number of the comp was? Is it listed on the outside of the box or were the thieves stupid enough to post it and if it is listed on the outside of the box why can ipods also have their serial number listed on the outside of the box so ebay shoppers can call and ask if they are stolen or not?
Here is the link to the story-
http://starbulletin.com/2003/06/29/news/story2.html
Also, under the Leopard OS at least, you can look at this file to see a list of all iPods that have been connected (not just the most recent):
[hard drive]/library/preferences/com.apple.ipod.plist
Toward the end of all the gibberish, you'll find something along the lines of this:
iPod> €[YM740ERCYXX 33A«ùnƒˆÄU1.1.2Ú
!"#$3A«¡ì LaØ[YM616KDHSZB1€U1.3.1DÄqø -2EXq~’¥¸
The serial numbers appear just after a left bracket symbol, so the above mess translates into serial nos. YM740ERCYXX (most recent) and YM616KDHSZB (older).
The dates are supposed to be in there as well, but I don't know how to read them.
sum1 stole my freakin ipod and i want it back,so im wondering can we track it like with the serial number bc i still hav the original box that it came in and it has the serial number and stuff
i have my serial number.....so what do i do now? i have tried looking for software but they all say that i needed to download it on my ipod prior....but i didnt so is there any way to still find it?
Matthew, thanks so much for the info! I can confirm that this still works in iTunes 7.7 on Windows. My ipod was stolen from my apartment and I can now give the serial number to the police.
there is another way that you can find your ipod serial number on itunes version 7 or later.
1. go into itunes and select the help menu
2. go to run diagnostics
3. RUN ALL OF THE DIAGNOSTICS
4.the read out after the diagnostics are done will give you your ipod serial number.
you just have to look for it.
good hunting!
Thanks for this site found my serial with info from here, i just had my 3rd gen 15gb firewire ipod stolen in costa rica, not much the police will do here going to go to the pawn shops here in town see if its around, with the serial ill be able to prove its mine, but it was time to upgrade anyways i guess... ill update if i track it down!
they thief also stole a bag of car cleaning supplies i guess i should just look for the crack addict trying to smoke car wax ja ja ja
FANTASTIC - your was the only place i found the right trick to retrieve the info - great work!
tried to post my stolen iPod on the site but the page never loads… is the site still up and running?
Here’s my serial # anyway: 8M625G81TXK
30 gb video black.
Thanks for any help.
Ben
I was wondering if I have the serial number of my ipod if I can find out the address of the computer that is using my stolen ipod.
Please help tract down the person responsible for taking it!!!
In Vista just go to
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPodDevices.xml
I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet, but, after my husband's ipod was stolen two nights ago, while were were next door for our neighbours 25th wedding anniversary - I decided if we were to become a statistic and go tell the police and file a report, then I'd need his ipod serial number.
The serial number was somewhere in itunes right? ... crap, it needs to be connected - so I got on the net to see if there were anymore ipod hacks for serial numbers ... that's how i found your site ... very helpful but nothing I found posted here would work and I suspected because it wasn't current and we had just bought leopard - so lots of things are different, one thing seems to be the p list editor, which to my exasperation still have not found on this mac. However I did find a method that works - please try it if you're at the end of your tether.
The website I've added to this post contains all the info, and the method is that you find the ipod plist:
The information we need is located in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPod.plist
To open that file we can use a plist editor or just use the Terminal. If you’ve never used Terminal, beware of commands that begin with “sudo”. Other than that, have fun.
The command to pull out our serial numbers is:
defaults read com.apple.iPod | grep Serial
(I just copied and pasted into terminal & hit enter) Terminal is in utilities on your mac.
Saddened to hear Apple hasn't bothered to make your stolen ipod unusable on the net. That would make stealing them not worth it. Shame on apple - I really had hoped they were different to microsoft in that way. I guess money & power corrupts.
Goodluck hope it helps.
charisa
stolen ipod classic #JQ5294LQTDS - South Auckland, New Zealand.
I got the information on my XP machine by running the diagnostics without my lost ipod connected. Once you are through with the diagnostics, iTunes provides a summary and it includes the serial number for the last connect ipod.
my iPod touch was stolen, and i cant find the serial number by running the diagnostics because there was a different iPod connected after mine was stolen. diagnostics only shows the most recent connection. how can i get past iPod's serial numbers??
Is there anybody who knows how to extract the the serial numbers of ipods on Vista? my daughters stolen ipod was not the last one connected, so we are unable to find the whole serial number I have a partial one on the invoice with just tje last four letters / numbers
Does IPOD Nanao's have a recognisable US serial. We bought ours in the US and brought it to the UK now it has been stolen in my sons school
this site has been a great help for me to get my ipod serial number, i have had a silver nano in leather case with headphones stolen today serial number below i live in west yorkshire and am gutted over this as it was a very very recent special gift for christmas, was insured but just found out theft is not covered!!! anyway good luck to everyone else who has had theirs taken and i hope the people with clearly no sense of humanity all burn in hell . katwazz@yahoo.com
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