New Stolen Phone Database Having Little Effect on Thefts

[alexander25]

Building a kill switch into a phone? You better have a damn good reason to kill that phone.

Say someone sells an iPhone legitimately, they can just kill the phone if they wanna mess around with the buyer? I hope if they allow this, there has to be a police report and investigation before they just "kill" a phone.

 

[SmileyBlast!]

So does erase also remove the passcode?

No it does not.

 

[thepowerofnone]

Sure there is more that can be done on Apple's end to secure these phones, but at the end of the day the problem is criminal behavior. As far as I'm concerned, this is a copout by big-city politicians for their failure to arrest and punish criminals (and for creating a criminal-friendly environment in their cities). George Gascon is DA of San Francisco, a sanctuary city that harbors illegal aliens. Illegal, non-citizens have more rights in SF than legal citizens. Try not paying a parking ticket in SF and see what happens, and you think politicians care if your iPhone is stolen? This sounds a lot like gun-control advocates blaming crime on gun manufacturers and inanimate objects, rather than the criminals that pull the trigger and the culture of non-judgmentalism that fosters criminal behavior. Don't hold your breath for politicians to actually take the tough steps necessary to reduce crime (stop-and-frisk being a notable and effective exception in NY). If you live in a big city and use an expensive mobile device in public, your chances of getting robbed and/or assaulted for it are high.

If I could down vote you for this comment, I would:

1. please don't bring up a specific politics issue you have with your DA, its not really relavent to this conversation at all.
2. "your chances of getting robbed and/or assaulted for it are high"? Really? High? Isn't that a wee bit of an exaguration?

 

[cambox]

This is the carrier's maintained list, not an Apple list.
If it was stolen and nothing was done how do you know it was taken to an Apple store?

----------

This isn't about a maintained list, you have jumped to the wrong conclusion.

I had an irate police call asking why did Apple not call them when the phone was taken in. The local police told Apple that the phone had been stolen, this was the first gen iphone, it was 24 hours after they had been put on sale, it was a unique (for my town) event, so it was obvious there was a good chance the thief would take it in to the Apple store.. and he did! Apples response was they knew it was stolen but didn't want to get involved.

 

[gatearray]

Restrictions need to be set so that Find my Phone settings in iCloud settings can be turned off by anyone with access to the phone.

two reasons:

anyone without a passcode can have this turned off by a thief or finder of lost phone.

parents can use the feature to monitor kids whereabouts if the feature can be locked on.

Also, Apple would be wise to portion the battery with a reserve so that a phone that has been turned off or is dead has an additional reserve that is useful for find my phone and remote wipe. Even if it cannot be remote wiped, a command could be sent to a stolen phone while it is off to remote wipe it, so that the command would be executed as soon as it was powered back up.

I'm going to assume that you meant "can't" be turned off by someone else.

There is a restrictions section in the settings on any iOS device, where you can select "do not allow changes" to accounts, which include iCloud features/services. This prevents anyone from turning off Find my iPhone if they have access to your phone. It uses a different pass code from the one used to lock your phone itself.

I recommend it to everyone, especially those who roll without a pass code lock, like me!

 

[Waxhead138]

Another thing to consider: This merely captures info after that fact, and does zero for pre-emptive action. Recording the info in a theft of this type does zero as a deterrent. Having used to work for VZW in sales, I can tell you that to a degree, lost / stolen records were always kept for ESN / MEID, assuming a customer actually reported it when it happened. What ends up happening is that someone brings a lost / stolen phone into a store...the employee discovers the phone as being hotlisted / unable to activate....then they advise the customer of why the phone can't be activated.

At no point can the employee imply that the person that brought the phone in actually played a role in its theft. At no point can the employee take the phone from the customer and keep it, stolen or not. All that can be done is to inform whoever possesses the phone of why it can't be activated. Sometimes they surrender the unit, sometimes they don't. Either way....next to no penalty actually comes from someone possessing the unit. Things may have changed...but this was how things typically went from 2001 through 2008, at least at VZW. The fear of falsely accusing someone / royally pissing off a potential customer outweighs the ability to really get anything done.

 

[Thunderhawks]

Sure there is more that can be done on Apple's end to secure these phones, but at the end of the day the problem is criminal behavior. As far as I'm concerned, this is a copout by big-city politicians for their failure to arrest and punish criminals (and for creating a criminal-friendly environment in their cities). George Gascon is DA of San Francisco, a sanctuary city that harbors illegal aliens. Illegal, non-citizens have more rights in SF than legal citizens. Try not paying a parking ticket in SF and see what happens, and you think politicians care if your iPhone is stolen? This sounds a lot like gun-control advocates blaming crime on gun manufacturers and inanimate objects, rather than the criminals that pull the trigger and the culture of non-judgmentalism that fosters criminal behavior. Don't hold your breath for politicians to actually take the tough steps necessary to reduce crime (stop-and-frisk being a notable and effective exception in NY). If you live in a big city and use an expensive mobile device in public, your chances of getting robbed and/or assaulted for it are high.

I suggest to have somebody develop a sleeve that goes over/around the iPhone and makes it look like and old outdated cellular flip phone.

Kind of like the wrap around labels you can buy to make a can look like Coke or Pepsi out of a beer can in public.

Seriously, this is not Apple's problem.

As some thinking posters mention, there are legal implications and other issues.

For now Apple tries with FindMyPhone.

Better than nothing!

 

[DesertEagle]

And without your address, all your friends addresses, all the bank details that you left on your phone, and so on. Maybe private photos. For many people, the loss of the phone is less important than someone being able to read everything.

This. An iPhone costs a few hundred bucks, but in the hands of a criminal, the data might be priceless.

 

[Robert.Walter]

I've personally had my iPhone stolen and the first thing the thief did was turn my phone off. I used the "find my iPhone" app for days and the thief never once turned the phone on when I checked, basically making the app useless.

I think a 4 digit password should be entered every time you try to turn the phone off, this might buy you some time to actually put the "find my iPhone" app to use.

Just a suggestion, but it could be effective in helping to stop amateur thieves.

I've been thinking along the same lines, that for those who elect to enable the Passcode feature, the phone will refuse to power down until that Passcode is entered.

 

[lordofthereef]

I am not surprised. I mentioned this a couple months ago and was practically laughed out of the thread. Oh well.

 

[KdParker]

Sure there is more that can be done on Apple's end to secure these phones, but at the end of the day the problem is criminal behavior. As far as I'm concerned, this is a copout by big-city politicians for their failure to arrest and punish criminals (and for creating a criminal-friendly environment in their cities). George Gascon is DA of San Francisco, a sanctuary city that harbors illegal aliens. Illegal, non-citizens have more rights in SF than legal citizens. Try not paying a parking ticket in SF and see what happens, and you think politicians care if your iPhone is stolen? This sounds a lot like gun-control advocates blaming crime on gun manufacturers and inanimate objects, rather than the criminals that pull the trigger and the culture of non-judgmentalism that fosters criminal behavior. Don't hold your breath for politicians to actually take the tough steps necessary to reduce crime (stop-and-frisk being a notable and effective exception in NY). If you live in a big city and use an expensive mobile device in public, your chances of getting robbed and/or assaulted for it are high.

Well this discussion went politcal rather quickly

 

[JohnDoe98]

... What sort of "kill switch" are they referring to here? If all it did was break the software thieves would find a way to get it back up and running. It'd need a self-destruct sequence like Mission: Impossible, but I don't think people want to carry bombs in their pocket.

Am I missing something here? I only see ways to make it a little more difficult to re-sell, not impossible. And I don't think that would lower crime.

Not really, look at the Apple TV 3. Jailbreakers still haven't managed to find a way to break into it. It is feasible to imagine the security of the phone to achieve this level too, making it impossible for the thieves to find a way to get it back up and running. Or at the very least, extremely hard to get it back.

 

[KdParker]

Another thing to consider: This merely captures info after that fact, and does zero for pre-emptive action. Recording the info in a theft of this type does zero as a deterrent. Having used to work for VZW in sales, I can tell you that to a degree, lost / stolen records were always kept for ESN / MEID, assuming a customer actually reported it when it happened. What ends up happening is that someone brings a lost / stolen phone into a store...the employee discovers the phone as being hotlisted / unable to activate....then they advise the customer of why the phone can't be activated.

At no point can the employee imply that the person that brought the phone in actually played a role in its theft. At no point can the employee take the phone from the customer and keep it, stolen or not. All that can be done is to inform whoever possesses the phone of why it can't be activated. Sometimes they surrender the unit, sometimes they don't. Either way....next to no penalty actually comes from someone possessing the unit. Things may have changed...but this was how things typically went from 2001 through 2008, at least at VZW. The fear of falsely accusing someone / royally pissing off a potential customer outweighs the ability to really get anything done.

for the iphone not activating it just makes it an iPod Touch. Which still cost a bit of money and I can see people using it that way.

 

[AppleMark]

To be honest, I've never quite understood Find My iPhone. Yes, it's very handy in tracking down where your iPhone is and exactly who has it and hell even following them home. But it's the "erase" feature that has me confused. The option to completely wipe the device, effectively restoring it to factory settings allowing the thief to sync it with their PC and have a fully functioning iPhone with little to no hassle...?

There should be an option for future iphone builds in 'find-my-phone' to 'brick-my-phone' which would require it to be returned to an Apple vendor who could restore/repair it, but only after checking it against a lost and stolen list.

I am not talking about setting fire to circuit boards here..., or anything silly which would potentially cause a hazard to the user in normal use. More like a software triggered blowing of a micro fuse of some sort.

But for the short term I am happy to be able to remove data in that event, as it is worth more to me than the phone right now.

 

[iisdan]

omfg

I have a grand idea. How about cloths manufacturers put a goddamn zipper on pockets!!! As for mugging, call the cops on someone elses phone and tell them your icloud username n pass so they can track it.

 

[JohnDoe98]

Another thing to consider: This merely captures info after that fact, and does zero for pre-emptive action.

Making stolen devices unusable would deter quite a bit of theft. Though I'd imagine the theft would still happen and people would simply sell the parts on ebay or something.

 

[ndpitch]

I've thought from the beginning that Apple, the carrier, or the user, should be able to initiate a "Brick phone" action that basically makes it unusable. It's ridiculous that this hasn't been done already.

Even better, they should go Mission: Impossible style, and allow the phone to self destruct on command. Not only would that deter theft, but it would maybe make some theives out there lose their filthy hands.

"Hey guys! Check out my new iPho...."

*boom*

 

[GoCubsGo]

well find my phone sure does not help if you lose it in a public place with every 2nd person having an iPhone

How so? I can find just my phone using that in a public place where there are other phones.

 

[JoeyCloverfield]

I think the Wipe feature should not only delete all your personal data but also leave a very basic OS. One that only allows the user to connect to a wifi network and input a 32 character key made up of lower and upper case letters as well as numbers. The key is given to the user when he/she chooses to wipe the phone and the key is not kept on the wiped device (even encrypted). Instead they need to connect to Apple's servers to verify the user who wiped the device has the device (through the 32 character key). The device would also be incapable of being restored or even recognized by iTunes.

 

[jgassens]

It needs an un-erase-able id.
Then once you report it stolen it should.
Display a message.
It should take a picture everytime it is picked up and email the pictures and its location on a map once and hour to the local police station.

Icaughtu, an app for a jailbroken phone, takes a picture (without the person knowing it) when an attempt to turn the phone off or when an attempt to circumvent the PIN screen and emails it to you with GPS coordinates. So, the phone effectively can't be turned off unless the SIM is pulled out giving the user some time to track the phone down and a pic of the person that stole it.

The fact that Find My iPhone can be twarted with the off switch is some what indicative that Apple didn't design it for theft, but accidentally losing it in your car or inside your home.

 

[Stratus Fear]

What a surprise that Apple have no interest in stopping theft. My Iphone was taken to an Apple store after it was stolen and the phone was on the list. Apple did absolutely nothing even tho they knew stolen. Cheers Apple!

Yeah, this does not surprise me. When my 2006 Core Duo iMac and 2005 PB G4 were stolen from my apartment several years ago, I talked with AppleCare support over the phone and they said they could note the fact that they were stolen. A couple years later I happened to be checking repairs at apple.com on a newer iMac I've had since then and I found listed in my account that both the stolen machines had been to an Apple Store genius bar later on, of course. There must be some liability issues for them in recovering flagged devices, otherwise I can't see why they wouldn't do it. Go figure though.

 

[KentuckyHouse]

EXACTLY MY POINT as far as media coverage. I believe Apple HAS tried enforcing this before and got nothing but flack from all the Apple haters, so they seem to have relaxed it recently. They're damned if they do, damned if they don't.

People say Apple is no longer the underdog? I say BS. They are constantly treated by the media like they are irrelevant and "doomed". This has been going on for years. I wish so much that there was an easy way for them to go private so that at least we could get all the Wall Street BS out of the way, but I don't think it will happen anytime soon, if ever.

I'm not sure what media you're watching, but from my perspective, Apple is one company in the media that can do no wrong.

Sure there is more that can be done on Apple's end to secure these phones, but at the end of the day the problem is criminal behavior. As far as I'm concerned, this is a copout by big-city politicians for their failure to arrest and punish criminals (and for creating a criminal-friendly environment in their cities). George Gascon is DA of San Francisco, a sanctuary city that harbors illegal aliens. Illegal, non-citizens have more rights in SF than legal citizens. Try not paying a parking ticket in SF and see what happens, and you think politicians care if your iPhone is stolen? This sounds a lot like gun-control advocates blaming crime on gun manufacturers and inanimate objects, rather than the criminals that pull the trigger and the culture of non-judgmentalism that fosters criminal behavior. Don't hold your breath for politicians to actually take the tough steps necessary to reduce crime (stop-and-frisk being a notable and effective exception in NY). If you live in a big city and use an expensive mobile device in public, your chances of getting robbed and/or assaulted for it are high.

Let me guess...you're a Tea Party member?

 

[bushido]

How so? I can find just my phone using that in a public place where there are other phones.

how would u know which of those 20 peoples with an iphone nearby is the thief?

 

[spazzcat]

To be honest, I've never quite understood Find My iPhone. Yes, it's very handy in tracking down where your iPhone is and exactly who has it and hell even following them home. But it's the "erase" feature that has me confused. The option to completely wipe the device, effectively restoring it to factory settings allowing the thief to sync it with their PC and have a fully functioning iPhone with little to no hassle...?

Your personal data is more important then the piece of hardware.

 

[thefourthpope]

I can't believe they want a registry! This is the first step towards taking our [phones]! Write your representative and tell them now way is this Constitutional!

/ deliberately misunderstanding