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Apple Compensates Victim of iMessage Bug for Breach of Privacy
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It's a slippery slope though, what if I sold my iPhone on craigslist, then file that police report?
I don't know if she really deserves compensation, but this is a serious problem that should have been addressed well before the release of iMessage.
Tough!
I'm sick and tired of all these crybabies blaming others for their mistakes. Customer K lost her phone...boo hoo. Deal with it. Call your friends. Tell them you lost your phone and that you aren't receiving their messages. Get a new phone. Don't always try to make someone else responsible for your mistakes. Apple didn't lose your phone...you did. Compensation from Apple? You must be joking.
I'm sick and tired of all these crybabies blaming others for their mistakes. Customer K lost her phone...boo hoo. Deal with it. Call your friends. Tell them you lost your phone and that you aren't receiving their messages. Get a new phone. Don't always try to make someone else responsible for your mistakes. Apple didn't lose your phone...you did. Compensation from Apple? You must be joking.
"I battled Apple's legal department and all I got was this stupid iPod Touch" should be engraved on it.
The phone was clearly stated to have been "stolen" quite a few times in the article. Should she have told the thief not to steal her phone?
I don't imagine that going over particularly well.
Yap, if you lose your credit card and there is bug that forbids inactivate it you won't blame the bank but you for losing it
Hehe . . . well I didn't think she would go all the way to Apple legal, but I suppose it's only natural that she did.
The phone was clearly stated to have been "stolen" quite a few times in the article. Should she have told the thief not to steal her phone?
No, she should have accepted the consequences that come along with having ones iPhone stolen. If it was stolen from her home, she should seek "compensation" from her insurance carrier. Seems to me she was just looking for a handout.
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Text messages <> money
Filing a false police report is a good way to end up in jail. Doing what you describe is a good way to get caught filing a false police report. lol
I agree that handouts shouldn't just be given in all cases when it's unwarranted, I'm one of the last to say otherwise, but the issue wasn't that it was stolen in itself but that the have iMessage bug wasn't fixed in a timely manner. Maybe she was looking for a lot of money, which would make that distasteful, but it isn't clear how much she was expecting so I won't pass judgement on a hypothetical amount. But in this particular case it's not completely unreasonable to expect some compensation for a bug that was taken care of pretty late.
That wont fix this issue!! Even if the customer gets a new phone and deactivates the old sim card, iMessages will still be sent to the lost iphone. That is the issue. On all other phones, deactivating the sim card will prevent txt messages being received on the lost phone.
It should ask you to reconnect with an Apple ID and password if it detects a SIM card is replaced, removed or deactivated. Although it's true that if an iPod touch is stolen, the only solution is to remote wipe anyway.
Where was "Find My iPhone" during all this?
There are some 'issues' with this story (as the story was told at least). Did User K have Find My iPhone activated? Did SHE Send a Remote Wipe command, or was that done by Apple? If it was Apple, I would think that if they could Send some kind of Command to the iPhone, they should also have been able to identify the Network Address of the network the stolen iPhone was operating on. Suspicious lack of credible information in this story...
If User K did NOT have Find My iPhone turned on (and thus lost the ability to send a Annoying Musical Tone and a Text Message to the stolen iPhones screen to dissuade the Thief from keeping the 'Haunted' iPhone, that particular iPhone User needs to 'learn' about her gadget a bit more before getting a new one). Not knowing the features and capabilities of your device is like leaving your car parked at the curb with the keys laying on the dash and a "STEAL ME! sign on the windshield!!
There are some 'issues' with this story (as the story was told at least). Did User K have Find My iPhone activated? Did SHE Send a Remote Wipe command, or was that done by Apple? If it was Apple, I would think that if they could Send some kind of Command to the iPhone, they should also have been able to identify the Network Address of the network the stolen iPhone was operating on. Suspicious lack of credible information in this story...
If User K did NOT have Find My iPhone turned on (and thus lost the ability to send a Annoying Musical Tone and a Text Message to the stolen iPhones screen to dissuade the Thief from keeping the 'Haunted' iPhone, that particular iPhone User needs to 'learn' about her gadget a bit more before getting a new one). Not knowing the features and capabilities of your device is like leaving your car parked at the curb with the keys laying on the dash and a "STEAL ME! sign on the windshield!!
Seriously, man. Privacy is very valuable. Apple's message system is the one that screwed her privacy. The article says her point was:
Not about the cost of the phone. Surely she handled that somehow, too.
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Indeed.
The problem is that iMessage has a design flaw that can result in your messages going to a device that you no longer have any control over.
There is no way for a user to stop messages going to an iOS device that they have lost/had stolen/broken/sold/given away without having that device in their possession.
Very few services would work in that way - certainly not one that verifies your number using an SMS message sent from your device.
"Find My iPhone" has its own flaws that mean it's really not suitable to rely on for remote wiping a device.
this makes a little more sense, but the article stated phone number.
still not making sense.
if i text you at 123-456-7890, then it CAN'T (physically cannot) go to your stolen phone as the sim card is not in that phone
A customer might buy an iPhone, sign up to iMessage and not realise that if Find My iPhone isn't switched on, then iMessage will continue to work even when the phone is stolen and SIM is blocked. I don't see Apple warning users that iMessage isn't protected unless you have Find My iPhone switched on.
At the end of the day, as others have said, there's a very simple solution for Apple to implement... The managing of iOS devices per Apple ID online. Find My iPhone isn't a foolproof way of sorting the problem, whereas managing iOS devices online is.
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But iMessage isn't using the cellular data network to validate itself... It's using the UDID, or Unique Device IDentifier. Once it's paired with that device, even if you use a different SIM or no SIM altogether, it will send messages via WiFi (or cellular data through any SIM), for as long as you are still logged in to that phone through an Apple ID.
Agreed. They've seem to have got her to agree to anonimity too. Personally, I would have taken it to the press and then she might have seen a bit more from Apple sooner....
Normal txt messages is sent/received only via the cellular voice portion of the network. Which is tied to a specific valid sim card with that number. iMessages is sent/received via the internet. And the iPhone sends/receives iMessages via either wifi or the data portion of the cellular connection. Apple's servers have the link between the phone number and the UDID of the phone. Not the sim card.
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At last! A documented sighting of a trivial lawsuit! I'd say an iPod Touch - maybe she didn't want to pay the vig every month, or maybe she had another iPhone anyway -- would be about the size of the tort here.
Apple was in good faith. This was new software with an unanticipated outcome in a particular circumstance. The software honchos got in touch with her. They delivered the fix. It took awhile.
By "pushed code" I'm assuming they just dropped the record linking the UDID to the customer's account from the iMessage DB.
Either that, or performed a "Remote Wipe" as you would from Find My iPhone. (Which I'm assuming she did not have activated.)