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Preventing turning off phone or enabling Airplane mode? - Jailbreak

M

maddin4j

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 28, 2009
96
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I was wondering if there is a way to make it harder prevent unauthorized people to turn off a jailbroken iPhone or enabling airplane mode?

The reason I am asking is that my iPhone 4S was snatched out of my hand yesterday by 3 bikers in Central London and although the police arrived quickly Find My iPhone couldn't track, lock, or wipe my iPhone as a data connection must have been disabled. (Those actions are still pending on icloud.com)

Find My iPhone is seriously flawed as it doesn't take much to prevent a phone from being tracked. Now I the thieves had not been able to turn off my phone then the police would have been able to track them.

Is there anything that I can do to prevent this on a jailbroken iPhone? Can anyone tell me if Activator could override the "Hold sleep button" function? What about Airplane mode? Can I for example require a pass code if anyone wants to change it to Airplane mode or anything like that?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. And some advise from me: look around before you use your precious iPhone in public...
 
Cool idea. I'm curious about the answer as well. You'd also need to do the hold both button action to prevent a hard reboot-because they could then shut it off before the OS tweaks load.

Keep in mind though once the battery dies, the chances are slim,
 
But with a jailbreak it can be made much more difficult. Especially when thieves are riding on bikes.
 
It could be deactivated if it was jailbroken.
Activator should be the trick, I might try it later on maybe
 
If you use a passcode, Airplane mode can't be enabled.

There is a tweak in Cydia (I can't recall the name) that doesn't allow the phone to shut off while at the lock screen. So with this and the combination of a passcode, a thief can't use airplane mode and can't turn the phone off.

HOWEVER, the SIM card can always be removed...
 
maddin4j said:
I was wondering if there is a way to make it harder prevent unauthorized people to turn off a jailbroken iPhone or enabling airplane mode?

The reason I am asking is that my iPhone 4S was snatched out of my hand yesterday by 3 bikers in Central London and although the police arrived quickly Find My iPhone couldn't track, lock, or wipe my iPhone as a data connection must have been disabled. (Those actions are still pending on icloud.com)

Find My iPhone is seriously flawed as it doesn't take much to prevent a phone from being tracked. Now I the thieves had not been able to turn off my phone then the police would have been able to track them.

Is there anything that I can do to prevent this on a jailbroken iPhone? Can anyone tell me if Activator could override the "Hold sleep button" function? What about Airplane mode? Can I for example require a pass code if anyone wants to change it to Airplane mode or anything like that?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. And some advise from me: look around before you use your precious iPhone in public...
Click to expand...


Reasons why this will never work. No matter what OS version or Jailbreak is running on the phone, you cant disable the ability to put the phone in restore mode or DFU mode. That is a Feature accessed by hardware buttons.

As soon as a thief Puts it in one of those two modes. All hope for Find My iPhone is done.

However if apple was to implement a Serial number tracking service on Find My iPhone, it would in fact be more efficient.
 
That wouldn't matter because the thieves wouldn't have access to a computer unless they carried a laptop and ran the restore right away. Does the Cydia tweak prevent restores in that manner or would you just pop out the battery to put the iPhone in DFU before it booted up to the Cydia power disable tweak?

There needs to be a portable device that can both track and disable your iPhone from turning off much like a car, but a thief can always popout the battery. There is a very simple fix. Put a passcode on your phone, backup your data every night by synching, and purchase insurance at $6/month. You can also keep your phone on you at all times. I make sure any time I set my phone down that it's returned to my pocket before I do anything else. If you want to find people selling stolen iPhones, just check craigslist. I've run across a few people who couldn't verify the identity of the iPhones they were selling.
 
You can at least disable turning off the device while locked using iCaughtU Pro. If they fail the passcode X amount of times, it will even take a pic of them using the front camera and email it to you with the address. Great for attempting to combat thieves.
 
I'd like to find a simple way to just prevent turning off the iphone on the lockscreen without using icaughtu or iGotya.
They seem to cause incompatibility issues with other packages I have installed and phone keeps crashing and facetime doesnt work.
 
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