Used phones with TikTok installers are being listed on eBay for thousands of dollars. And it looks like some people might actually be buying it.
Despite US President Donald Trump signing an executive order on Monday postponing any potential ban on the social media app for 75 days, TikTok remains absent from all US app stores – with Apple and Google offering no hints on whether or not it will return. . This means that if you’re in America and you delete the app or lose your phone, you’re currently blocked, and there’s no way to download it again. For content creators, brand marketers, and social media managers, this can spell disaster. And an expensive one at that.
Opportunistic eBayers seized the opportunity to profit from this misfortune. A quick search for ‘TikTok phone’ will bring up more than 9,000 listings for used smartphones from the likes of Apple and Samsung, all of which already have the TikTok app installed.
This is possible by having the seller simply sign out of the iCloud or Google account associated with the device instead of restoring the phone to factory settings. Any buyer will then need to be careful not to sync to any existing cloud backup they have, to avoid losing the app they paid so much for, as well as ensuring the seller has removed any security measures.
It goes without saying that anyone considering this route should buy with extreme caution, especially given the asking price that many sellers try to charge.
You can find phones listed with TikTok for up to $100 $50,000 Under eBay’s Buy It Now selling format, but it’s hard to believe that anyone could actually believe their phone would sell for that – and there’s no indication that it did.
There are many other products listed in the $2,000 to $5,000 range, but as to whether anyone actually buys them at that price, it’s still unlikely.
What can be said is that despite the inflated prices there He is interest. These phones We are Selling, but it is difficult to determine the exact amount. Select the “Sold” filter in your eBay search, and there are a lot of sales that appear to be completed, but almost all of them have an unadvertised “Best Accepted Offer” note associated with them.
Any auctions that ended at incredibly inflated prices seemed to have their devices relisted soon after, indicating an unsuccessful sale, with only those falling close to the market value of used phones actually looking to sell.
A quick look at the auctions currently underway also shows that these phones are attracting much more reasonable prices than initial research might suggest.
It’s a bit unclear whether the TikTok feature is real or not, but that doesn’t stop people from trying. TikTok phone search term results have soared by more than 2,000 items as I write this, a sense of urgency undoubtedly driven by the fact that the app could be returned to US app stores at any time.
Currently, a TikTok search on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store is met with data citing legal requirements as the reason the app is unavailable. This comes despite Trump’s executive order clearly directing the Department of Justice “not to take any law enforcement action or impose any sanctions against any entity for any non-compliance with the law.”
It remains to be seen whether fears have faded and TikTok will emerge again before the 75-day period is up — as is the case with any deal Trump strikes in the meantime — but those left out of their favorite video-sharing app are completely out of options. This week, thousands of users flocked to another Chinese-owned social media platform, RedNote, leaving the app scrambling to hire English moderators while also trying to capitalize on its newfound success.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is also doing its part to take missing TikTokers under its wing, introducing a series of new features and even introducing big influencers as $5,000 to join Its platforms.