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Apple Researching Forensic Data Capture in Cases of iOS Device Theft
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If you're a thief and actually try unlocking the phone using YOUR finger for TouchID then you deserve to be arrested, for being a moron.
You leave finger prints on anything you touch. If you're afraid for your privacy, don't touch things, especially stuff that doesn't belong to you (like other peoples' cell phones).
The iPhone home button already captures fingerprint details. The only thing it doesn't do currently is store them.
This feature is supposed to become active once the owner of the devices sets it in Lost/Stolen Mode.
Add to the fingerprint: Location, Audio and Photo/Video data, and you got your thief.
I contacted Apple many years ago asking them to implement a feature whereby a "missing" phone could not be shut off. Just goes to show. I'm convinced they create certain features to give the impression of security but allowing workarounds so they continue to sell replacement devices. Something to do with commercial incentive.
The reactions here are funny, you are dead set against the FBI accessing a suspected terrorists iPhone because it wants to force Apple to do it but you are more then happy for Apple to store biometric data and photos of people that are 'suspected' thieves?
Talk about selling your souls out to corporations....
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Have you got a link to that information?
Talk about selling your souls out to corporations....
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Have you got a link to that information?
I was just told they were dealt with. Trust me it was an employee. He was cleaning the buses and had a coveralls on with a safety vest - definitely not a driver or office employee. That was the last link in the chain of custody.
Besides, the claims rep confirmed him as such when I showed her the picture of the guy in the bus garage with the bus number clearly visible in the photo. And I had about 8 of them. They confirmed they tracked the guy down but were "unable to recover the phone."
After they offered to pay for my new phone ($845) I signed a waiver agreeing that the matter was effectively settled and didn't see the need to press the matter any further.
Funny part: my phone made its way back to the Apple Store and someone there was nice enough to remove it from my account and let someone else register it despite me naming the device "stolen" in my device list on Apple.com. So I was pretty pissed about that and called Apple. I ended up going through an iPhone support tech who was nice and transferred me to someone in the legal department after some (fairly reasonable) amount of time. After explaining the situation she was able to confirm the phone was registered and they had information as to whom it was, but that a court order would be required for them to provide it. I asked if it would be possible someone at the store could get a talking to and she assured me that matter would be brought up regardless of how I proceeded.
So I relayed that message to the officer and basically said since I had a replacement phone I considered the matter closed but he was welcome to follow up if he wished and that I'd co-operate.
As far as I know that was the end of it.
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Yeah. That collection is a complete waste of time IMO. Photos and GPS sent to "find my iphone" would be much more effective.
What about TC's professed desire to maintain utmost level of privacy for iPhone users? And the U S Constitution? Sounds like hacking to me. Totally unacceptable to me.
Like I said, I'm fine with the finger prints to be stored locally on "my" phone, just not on a server.
On holiday in May I found a lost iPhone which I handed into the police, in the hope it reached the owner , given its in lost mode, if my fingers made contact with the home button, it would be BS for my details or pics to be uploaded to a server as a would be thief....
Let's be honest , police don't have resources to chase up those individual leads for a smartphone, chances of getting ur phone back would be very very very minimum at best, while people's details would be stored.....until proven innocent . So little benefit for so much privacy given away in return.
How would that work? Surely they could just leave the phone until the battery ran out and it shut down anyway?
I don't think you'd just sit around waiting for your phones battery to die out before you could track it?
Let's say you found out your phone was lost at a party and you found out the next day it's gone, during that period your phones battery died anyway, at least it'll have the most up to date co-ords. They won't be able to switch it off and take it to some place you've never even heard of.
I propose built in sim as well, so no one can even remove the sim for Internet to go off.
If you want to be pedantic.... Just cause you try to unlock a device, does not make you a thief....you can find a Lost device ....
I'm very pleased that we can say this about the UK. Let me rephrase for you '*Potential* criminals have a right to anonymity, too.' While this unfortunately sometimes shields those who seek to do ill, it also provides invaluable protection for those who are innocent and wrongly targeted either through corruption or negligence. Want your name on the front of newspaper after being mistakenly or maliciously identified of a crime you did not commit?
And yet anyone could lift your fingerprints from the outside of that phone so how is that any different?
This isn't about the small chances of police following up on minor cases. This is pointed much more towards cases of terror or child crimes when identifying the person related to the crime could mean life or death. I've worked in computer forensics for a long time and having this data could be HUGE to an active investigation and making charges stick.
FWIW, I have an iPhone 6 on Verizon (which has its roots in CDMA rather than GSM). It has a sim slot, but only for a sim to use on other networks (CDMA doesn't use sims). You can't get the Verizon network access shut off by removing the sim.
I spent a year working on smartphones designed for children in mind, privacy and data collection in this area is a whole different ball game.
While you want the data for forensic purposes, to deal with criminals , capturing a minors fingerprints , and picture as a false positive ..... Huge issue!
We were creating a capability using smartphones so parents could find thier children in say life or death situations, we were forbidden to use GPS, had to be triangulation and to a wider area, due to legal concerns and the law forbidding children to be tracked in case the parents handset was compromised or stolen .
While many design aspects are for the right reasons, all edge cases must be considered.
If you find a device you shouldn't trigger this. Hence my emphasis in the previous post. If you've found it, check if it is passcode/fingerprint secured, if yes hand it in. There is no need to try your fingerprint 6+ times or a passcode 10+ on a locked device that you found.