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Apple Patent Application Addresses Advanced 'Find My iPhone' Features and Customizability

tlevier

tlevier

macrumors regular
Jun 7, 2010
134
2
Littleton, CO
It'll be great when "Find my iPhone" becomes "Find my Apple". I know it's already on iPad and iPod, but the next logical step is Mac. Wouldn't it be cool if Apple embedded a cellular chip into every MacBook that operated "Find My" for free and if you wanted a data plan, you could buy it?

There's already some great stories out there about Macs getting recovered, but the owner had to wait until it got connected to the internet... I think this type of feature would be awesome.

I also reaffirm other people's concern about security related to Mail Accounts. If you go to modify settings on an existing/installed mail account, you should be prompted to re-authenticate your password.

Having a password at log-in/unlock is not enough. Friends play jokes and good Samaritans let strangers use their phone to make a call. Just because we are trusting shouldn't make us vulnerable. Trusting and Secure shouldn't be exclusive.
 
D

dustinsc

macrumors regular
Nov 21, 2009
230
52
Wow, a patent that would have a useful implementation. There aren't too many of those appearing on this site.
 
tlevier

tlevier

macrumors regular
Jun 7, 2010
134
2
Littleton, CO
ericinboston said:
I'm not a fan of the "contact me" being the only feature/choice. If that's the ONLY thing a thief/founder can do with the phone, then very likely you will never get it back. Seriously. If someone steals your phone and it's useless, they are just going to smash it or try to sell it to someone who might have hacking tools to nuke the phone back to normal.
Click to expand...

I don't think 'Contact Me' is for thieves, but rather good Samaritans who find a lost phone.
 
P

pdjudd

macrumors 601
Jun 19, 2007
4,037
65
Plymouth, MN
tlevier said:
I don't think 'Contact Me' is for thieves, but rather good Samaritans who find a lost phone.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Thieves aren't really interested in returning your property - they are interested in making a buck off the device or the info that is on said device - much harder to do in this scenario if access is restricted or auto-wiped.
 
tlevier

tlevier

macrumors regular
Jun 7, 2010
134
2
Littleton, CO
tlevier said:
I also reaffirm other people's concern about security related to Mail Accounts. If you go to modify settings on an existing/installed mail account, you should be prompted to re-authenticate your password.

Having a password at log-in/unlock is not enough. Friends play jokes and good Samaritans let strangers use their phone to make a call. Just because we are trusting shouldn't make us vulnerable. Trusting and Secure shouldn't be exclusive.
Click to expand...

Well, I feel like a monkey's uncle. Turn on "Restrictions" and disallow modifications to Mail Accounts. Only a 4-digit pin, but that's better than nothing.
 
T

tshort

macrumors regular
Jul 20, 2007
160
11
World Citizen said:
We need Power up over network...
As long as I cant wake-up or power-up my device when it's shut down... I have limited use for Findmyiphone...

Most criminals know these functions... and shut the phone down until they are in a network free zone...
And then you as owner has to look 24/7 to the FMiphone application to see when he is turned on... A notification about this would be nice.
Click to expand...

My son had his iPhone turned off when I ran Find My iPhone, when he turned it back on in the morning, I got an email indicating it was turned back on... and where he was...

Dear MobileMe member,

XXXX's iPhone 3G was located at June 10, 2011 on 7:17 AM.

You can view this device’s location for the next 24 hours with the Find My iPhone app or at me.com/find
Click to expand...
 
mw360

mw360

macrumors 68020
Aug 15, 2010
2,032
2,395
tlevier said:
I don't think 'Contact Me' is for thieves, but rather good Samaritans who find a lost phone.
Click to expand...

And good Samaritans can only return your phone if they can unlock it and work out who the owner is. A 'contact owner' button can only make that much easier.

Of course it'll make it easier to make 'we've got your phone, loser!' type calls, but hopefully the victim would be able to respond directly with 'I've got your location and your photo.'
 
B

BruiserB

macrumors 68000
Aug 9, 2008
1,731
705
Thunderhawks said:
Also, wouldn' t reporting the location of where the iphone actually is bring Al Franken back for more political nonsense?
Click to expand...

It's just "Lo-jack" for your phone. You should be able to track your own phone. As long as others (including Apple or the Gov't) aren't able to have access to track you.
 
spazzcat

spazzcat

macrumors 68040
Jun 29, 2007
3,656
4,744
tlevier said:
It'll be great when "Find my iPhone" becomes "Find my Apple". I know it's already on iPad and iPod, but the next logical step is Mac. Wouldn't it be cool if Apple embedded a cellular chip into every MacBook that operated "Find My" for free and if you wanted a data plan, you could buy it?

There's already some great stories out there about Macs getting recovered, but the owner had to wait until it got connected to the internet... I think this type of feature would be awesome.

I also reaffirm other people's concern about security related to Mail Accounts. If you go to modify settings on an existing/installed mail account, you should be prompted to re-authenticate your password.

Having a password at log-in/unlock is not enough. Friends play jokes and good Samaritans let strangers use their phone to make a call. Just because we are trusting shouldn't make us vulnerable. Trusting and Secure shouldn't be exclusive.
Click to expand...

Find my Mac is in Lion....
 
diamond.g

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,099
2,438
OBX
tshort said:
My son had his iPhone turned off when I ran Find My iPhone, when he turned it back on in the morning, I got an email indicating it was turned back on... and where he was...
Click to expand...

does that still happen if they put it in DFU and do a restore?
 
aristotle

aristotle

macrumors 68000
Mar 13, 2007
1,768
5
Canada
GQB said:
Gotta love it. Tech blogs are abuzz 24/7 with warnings about privacy and analysis of how corporations are selling our identities, but if someone steps up to make manufacturers be more responsible about it, its HIM that's suddenly the bad guy.
Amazing.
Click to expand...
Why do you think tech blogs are abuzz about this non-issue on iPhones? It is a non-issue on iOS because that data was a "CACHE" file for the benefit of the user stored on "their" device. It is in the best interest of tech blogs to keep that non-story alive to generate more traffic to their sites for ad revenue.
 
J

JCanfield

macrumors newbie
Jun 6, 2010
17
0
pdjudd said:
Indeed. Thieves aren't really interested in returning your property - they are interested in making a buck off the device or the info that is on said device - much harder to do in this scenario if access is restricted or auto-wiped.
Click to expand...

Half right. These are generally crimes of opportunity - a thief sees a phone out in the open or in a place that has little risk of them getting caught, they steal it. They want to turn the theft into money as soon as possible, what's on it is completely irrelevant to them. The buyer, on the other hand, may be VERY interested in personal data...
 
G

gilb55

macrumors newbie
Jul 5, 2010
16
5
What would be really useful for find my iphone would be the ability for it to work with data roaming turned off. I lost my iphone abroad recently with data roaming turned off to avoid the massive charges and didn't realise that the feature wouldn't work
 
T-Will

T-Will

macrumors 65816
Sep 8, 2008
1,042
433
eyhk said:
This is all good for protecting your personal information in the case where you lose your device, but what if your AppleID gets hacked/stolen?

Soon with all your documents, music, email, calendars, pictures, contacts, application settings, etc backed up to the cloud, all thieves need to steal personal information is a single iPod Touch and a good phishing scheme. Just enter the stolen AppleID on the iPod Touch, sync to the cloud, and the thief has a copy of your entire phone.

I am an Apple fan and love my iPhone 4 but after being victim to iTunes account theft I'm very skeptical about Apple's focus on account security. They have gotten better since then, requesting you to re-enter the security code of your credit card if you access iTunes from a new device, but I doubt they can use that for syncing to the cloud and I'm anxious to hear more about how they plan to protect your data.
Click to expand...

This is a REALLY great point. Right now it looks like our only defense is having a strong password. I wonder if any changes will be made to make our accounts more secure.
 
P

Pavia

macrumors regular
Jan 22, 2010
117
0
I'm sad that no one has yet pointed out the differences in the spelling of the person's name.
St. John Smythe and St. John Smyth.

It is in my nature to correct :(
 
S

samcraig

macrumors P6
Jun 22, 2009
16,779
41,982
USA
So my comment now has a -4? Interesting. I guess caring about security isn't a popular opinion?
 
M

Mak47

macrumors 6502a
Mar 27, 2011
751
32
Harrisburg, PA
These are all great features. Most phones have been capable of transmitting audio/video remotely for law enforcement purposes for years--thanks Apple for making that functionality visible and available for the actual owner of the device.

Most people commenting so far are assuming these features are for stolen phones--remember that far more phones are lost than are stolen. Even many that are stolen are often simple pranks among friends rather than legitimate thefts. These features will be great for those who have lost their phones.

Currently I can get an approximate gps position of my iPhone, with this I can get that, plus images of the surroundings, thereby making it easier to find. Good stuff.
 
rjohnstone

rjohnstone

macrumors 68040
Dec 28, 2007
3,896
4,493
PHX, AZ.
What they need to implement is the ability to remote brick the phone.
Wiping data and scrambling content is nice, but it still leaves the phone in a usable state.
Most thieves just want the phone. They couldn't care less about the data on it.

Give us a remote nuclear option that turns the phone into a paperweight. :D

Of course none of these solutions work if the thief pops the SIM card and powers down the phone.
 
C

CallistoJag

macrumors member
Jan 23, 2007
38
0
England
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Is that an iPhone 5?
 
klamse25

klamse25

macrumors 6502a
Oct 25, 2009
610
6
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Do you all understand the concept of a patent? This very well may not be on the iPhone.
 
J

JAT

macrumors 603
Dec 31, 2001
6,473
124
Mpls, MN
ArtOfWarfare said:
You bring to mind an interesting issue... why is he still in office?
Click to expand...
He just got there. It seems to me that all new members of Congress, probably esp Senators, attempt to make themselves known right away by jumping on or making up some publicized bill. SOP, really.
jav6454 said:
Then it means the device never truly powered down. I doubt it'd happen.
Click to expand...
Mine never is, so I guess I'm fine with that.
 
ratzzo

ratzzo

macrumors 6502a
Apr 20, 2011
829
35
Madrid
This is great. But any thief with a brain will simply surpass these security levels by taking the SIM out and wiping the iOS new. Until they develop a long-term and solid option that can't be rewritten or restored, all of these improvements are only half useful in my opinion. But better to have something than nothing, in case the burglar doesn't turn out to be the wisest.
 
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