Questions about removing enrollment from Chromebooks

Question

I can see that more and more questions about this topic are posted on Super User or Unix & Linux. It usually goes like this:

Someone bought a used Chromebook online (eBay, Amazon Marketplace, Craigslist, …) but the device is enrolled to the Chromebook for Enterprise or Education environment and cannot be used like a privately owned Chromebook.

For reference here is what the support page says:

Reset a work or school Chromebook

If you're using your Chromebook at work or school, you can't reset it. Ask your administrator to wipe the data on your Chromebook and re-enroll the device on your work or school network.

From my point of view any modification to these devices is very likely to be illegal (as in computer fraud, sabotage or possession of stolen goods), so such questions should better be closed and a recommendation be given to the OP to return the device.

I'm aware that there is a slight chance of sloppy managed enrolled devices being sold online, enrollment though should be removed when the device can be kept after leaving the organization in question—thus weaken the argument of spying on users. No customer should have to deal with this nor should sites like Stack Exchange and other communities.

In case of an employee or student of the respective organization being unhappy with the device being enrolled s/he should contact the respective administrator or contact person of the organization instead of asking for hacking advice. A clear distinction between company/organization property and privately owned may also help here understanding why things are as they are.

Cross-posted to U&L: https://unix.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4634/49853

Answer 1

After a lot of thinking - My opinion is that its actually going to be a lot simpler to have a canonical answer posted with a hypothetical or real case (I'm sure we can find one!) of someone needing to do this, picking it, and making it a community FAQ.

While I do suppose we could use our decision on hackintoshes as precedent having a single answer that goes "You can't according to google, and its plausible if you bought it, the machine might be stolen or misconfigured, and you need the organisation to fix it" is an actually acceptable answer.

Unlike hackintoshes, this is narrowly scoped and can be handled as dupes rather than closing as site policy.

Most hacking answers will be terrible and link outside I suspect and we can nuke em, or handle the answer as needed.

This is simple, dosen't need special cases, and using community FAQs seems right to me.