How to deal with K G Finance Lock

Author's note: I was the kid in high school who openly made deals with the right people to work around the web filter. I know how to deal with local management like MS AD and Apple Remote Desktop and have seen how remote management has evolved. I'm not new to this realm. Once I've written off something as unbreakable, it's not practical.

These Samsung finance locks are using Knox MDM through MDM provided by a 3rd party provider and tied to the IMEI and S/N of the phone. The phone has remote MDM which does not interfere with customer use outside of normal nonrecovery factory resetting in most cases because it is used to secure the asset as its primary function. Companies use the same Knox MDM to lock down corporate phones as well, this is an enterprise feature Samsung makes available to anyone who wants it; outside of corporate-owned devices, this has no value besides locking a financed phone down when it's being financed by a place who primarily services customers known to flake on their bill and not carriers.

There is no way to bypass this outside of replacing the entire motherboard due to how Knox MDM works, as it is cloud-based and locks to the IMEI and S/N after it talks to the MDM provider installed onto the phone. Samsung has a horrible reputation for how many major Android updates they provided on many of these less than flagship class/priced devices. Still, the Knox MDM is secured the moment someone blinks, finds a workaround, and can bypass it. Samsung is %#*@ sure to leave no holes in their permalocked bootloaders and KNOX.

You can often tell by seeing if the nonrecovery mode reset is blocked, as these places (be it Rent-A-Center and your similar rent-to-own shop in your country) block that in 95% of cases to make sure you can't easily flip the phone and avoid paying for it.