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One of the security features of iOS is that after a failed number of attempts to unlock the phone, it will prevent users from trying again for a certain amount of time. Presumably these are steps to discourage brute force hacking attempts. Unfortunately for one lady in China, this resulted in her being locked out of her iPhone for 47 years.

In a report from the South China Morning Post (via 9to5Mac), a woman in China identified by her family name Lu claims that she had given her toddler her iPhone to watch educational videos online. However when she came home, she discovered that her phone had been disabled for 25 million minutes, which roughly works out to be 47 years.

She brought her iPhone to an Apple store in Shanghai where according to the technician, Wei Chunlong, she had the choice to either wait out those 47 years, or wipe her phone and start from scratch. According to Wei, this isn’t the worst case he’s seen as he’s seen devices locked up to 80 years. “In this woman’s case, the only way out [without waiting] is to erase all the phone data and do a factory reset.”

What’s interesting is that Lu actually waited two months to see if the problem would rectify itself. Lu was quoted as saying, “I couldn’t really wait for 47 years and tell my grandchild it was your father’s mistake.” It is unclear if she might had backed up her data to the cloud or computer.

Filed in . Read more about iOS, iPhone, Security and Social Hit.