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iOS 7's Activation Lock Feature Helping Reduce iPhone Theft in Three Major Cities

urtules said:
They were hacked because password reuse, it's not Apple software weakness. They used same password for multiple services or web sites. One of those services was hacked, so hackers got their passwords and just randomly guessed it.
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Ah, so there's no technical security flaw on Apple's side, just human error and the hacking of other sites. That's good. One should never use the same password for an iCloud account and a Yahoo! account, haha.
 
unixphone said:
lol, what if i do not know my wife's passcode and i am carrying her phone in a flight?
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Why would you be carrying a phone that you can't use in the first place ? In that manner you could be holding an iPhone that doesn't belong to you. Personally I support the idea that I DO NOT WANT my iPhone to be turned off without a password and the same goes for putting the iPhone in flight mode from control center on locked screen.
 
g0odfr1end102 said:
No, because you would still be able to use FindMyPhone!
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It wouldn't have cell service.

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applegigs said:
Why would you be carrying a phone that you can't use in the first place ? In that manner you could be holding an iPhone that doesn't belong to you. Personally I support the idea that I DO NOT WANT my iPhone to be turned off without a password and the same goes for putting the iPhone in flight mode from control center on locked screen.
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If your wife doesn't have anywhere to carry it, or if you're borrowing it on the plane (more likely your mom in this case), but she forgot to tell you the passcode, so you're locked out for the time being. Someone said before that it's a safety hazard to have a device that you cannot turn off. I agree. I can't see this being legal.
 
Looks like there's going to be a new market in wrecking iPhones for spare parts. In fact an iPhone as spare parts, may be more valuable than the iPhone itself judging by what apple charges and the rate at which people break screens.
 
So if an iPhone is reported stolen and thus black listed or whatever, can the iPhone be used as an iPod Touch? Or is it totally dead?
 
Daveoc64 said:
Or they could use Control Center to turn Airplane Mode on from the lock screen.





It's not all that smart (it's been thought of many times before and dismissed for a range of reasons) and it would almost certainly be illegal in some places. For safety reasons, you need to be able to turn off a device which contains radios without requiring a password.
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Oh really... Since you are sounding a bit arrogant here, name one such place where such a law exists and a cite for it, because it is not the least bit believable.
 
a0me said:
How should users reboot their iPhone when it's completely frozen? It doesn't happen often but when it does, hardware reset is the only solution.
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Even if they could reboot it, it wouldn't completely turn it off. It would reconnect to the towers in a minute or so and be back where they were before, but with slightly more RAM free. Never mind, you can still shut the phone off while doing a hard reset.
 
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inscrewtable said:
Looks like there's going to be a new market in wrecking iPhones for spare parts. In fact an iPhone as spare parts, may be more valuable than the iPhone itself judging by what apple charges and the rate at which people break screens.
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Not really. Locked iPhones ('for parts'🙄) already sell for much less on eBay than a full phone. If your theory were true nobody would sell used phones whole.
 
foobarbaz said:
Because then theft would be replaced by blackmail as a lucrative crime. "Want your phone back? Send me some bitcoin and I'll mail it to you."
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Well this now prevents me from returning the phone back to its original owner. I'm not interested in any reward or anything, just want to do the right thing, imagining myself in a situation where I lost mine. I don't think I am the only one.

Even if a person asks for something in return for handing his belonging back that's up to an owner to decide on weather do it or not. Now it's just not an option, because there's simply now way to let the owner know you got his phone and willing to return it to him.
 
Full icloud activation lock can be bypassed (using doulci.net) and I have unlocked 2 handsets myself (one my own phone where I purported to no know the credentials for and a second 5c I bought on eBay for £52 delivered).

Handset in activation lock screen, open iTunes and connect, enter a defined spoof IP in your host file to direct to a non-Apple server that allows activation of the handset, continue activation on handset without entering the 'correct' detail, done. Took a little over 3mins per handset.

They are currently working on a tool that is a single piece of sw as well so there is not even any need to follow the 6 or so steps or use iTunes to bypass this lock feature. It turns out that the process for activation locking and unlocking is actually quite crude ... Really need to step up their game.
 
The only thing that i think needs to be added to this is:

I left my iPad Air 'WiFi Only' model on a Airplane last week. I can't even get a message to come up on the iPad letting them know my contact details because the device won't be connected to the internet.

Because i have a passcode lock on it, this stops the person who could have it connecting this to a internet source if they wanted to return it to it's rightful owner.


I don't know how this could be fixed but it certainly should be something to sort out.
 
Regardless of whether this can be defeated or not. It isn't easily worked around. Common everyday thieves are going to be looking for other types of phones, now knowing the iPhone and iPad are very difficult to activate and that means hard to sell.
 
Daveoc64 said:
Or they could use Control Center to turn Airplane Mode on from the lock screen.
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This is the main reason I don't have Control Center active on my lock screen; which also means my phone isn't susceptible to that missed call/airplane mode lock screen bypass issue (still has the bug but you can't use it).
 
Fzang said:
Probably nothing. Thieves or other people can't use it unless they have your Apple ID credentials.

Could probably strip it for spare parts, but I don't think that's a booming business model, seeing as replacement parts are actually really cheap compared to a fully assembled and functional iPhone.

So, yeah. Probably nothing.
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I am sure the reduction in thefts are from the small time, small street thieves who have a local fencing network. Worst, they fence the good themselves.

Look it up on line and you'll see stories of profession rings of international gangs "harvesting" smartphones for overseas distributions. Most of them end up in Russia and Africa that don't have competitive reseller networks.

One a few dozen to a hundred phones are grabbed, they are shipping overseas in Faraday cages to avoid tracking. Then someone jailbreaks them and re-roms them. At times, these re-roms are beta roms downloaded from the developer site. Some rom images are patched for overseas cell networks not supported by Apple.
 
Does anyone know if "Find my iPhone" (and therefore this feature essentially) is offered to be activated when the phone is first turned on (or restored)? I can't remember.

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PocketSand11 said:
It wouldn't have cell service.
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I think he's saying that it would work if the thief connected it to wifi too.
 
In Australia you can have your telco block the IMEI of the phone rendering it useless. Is this service not available in the USA?
 
foobarbaz said:
Because then theft would be replaced by blackmail as a lucrative crime. "Want your phone back? Send me some bitcoin and I'll mail it to you."
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Android has this as a standard feature and yet I've never seen a report of this happening.

It's a lot less likely than "somebody finds your phone and messages you to help you get it back."
 
H2SO4 said:
Is a good step forward.
I’m wondering what those that relieve people of iPhones will think of next.

Back in the days when car theft was easy you’d wake up in the morning to find your driveway empty. Thieves now have to break into your house to get the keys which is potentially more worrying!!!!
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I'm not sure this actually happens. Thieves are by their nature lazy, ergo, no job, and prone to going after the low hanging fruit. If you make something so difficult as to not be profitable for them, they're going to move on to easier prey.
 
thaifood said:
In Australia you can have your telco block the IMEI of the phone rendering it useless. Is this service not available in the USA?
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This is available on every network across the globe, however it only render the handset 'useless' in its native country, and can be used perfectly normally elsewhere. Ie a UK network barred handset can be used anywhere other than the UK with no limitations.
 
This is a feature I love. I actually lost my iPhone. Using the find my iPhone realized that it had fallen out of my pocket in a rental car. But I saw my phone continuing to move which made me think the next renter of the car was keeping the phone. I called the rental company who called the renter and heard back they had not found the phone. Sent a message to the phone that police had been alerted, waited a bit and then did the remote wipe and killed the phone. The renter all of a sudden called the rental company and reported finding my phone. I took three days in total but I got my phone back.

Real thieves will probably figure out a way around this, but for opportunistic would-be thieves, it seems to works well.
 
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