All Macs have some limited theft-tracking too, which you can enable for free: Find My Mac works with Guest Accounts.
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San Francisco District Attorney Impressed by iOS 7's Activation Lock Feature
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All Macs have some limited theft-tracking too, which you can enable for free: Find My Mac works with Guest Accounts.
There has been plenty done about car thefts.
Registered serial numbers on the vehicle body and engine (the vin number).
Standard door locks.
Electronically chipped keys.
Anti theft alarms.
Anti theft steering wheel locks.
It would be helpful if you could educate yourself on how far the industry has come, before making such a remark. All these measures help prevent car theft. Eliminating car theft would require eliminating civil liberties and the first amendment. Do don't bother making that counter argument.
Do you normally ride the NYC subway? Have you ever ridden the NYC subway?
I ride it Monday through Friday, to and from my office. I am always carrying my iPad mini (and full sized iPad before that), which I use for reading during the ride.
Odd, no one has even given me a second look, much less accosted me threatening death or dismemberment for my iPad.
I see lots of other riders doing the same as I.
Amazing how some people love to dramatize situations which are not really all that dramatic.
Yea, in all reality anything can be done. No one is arguing this will end theft. The idea is to cut it down in size so that our current resources can deal with it.
Well, he exaggerated. However, you're also talking about rush hour which is much safer. There are other times of the day and parts of town where waving around an Apple device or a tablet is not wise. (Source: I also ride the NYC subway everyday....to work as well as all hours of the day and night.)
Agreed. If you're on 42nd street grand central station in the middle of the day, your chances of getting mugged are 0. the only time to really worry about that is either in dodgy neighborhoods or the middle of the night where there may be few people on the platform. There's the snatch and steal possibility but that can easily be circumvented by some kind of outward vigilance.
GREAT START - need civil access and assistance
While a kill switch is a great start, from my understaanding of the process so far, the user needs to initiate the kill... which means if a thief can wipe the phone soon after theft then the user's killswitch doesn't apply.
So I think that Metro/transpo/police offices need to have available to consumers a computer so the killswitch can be activated quickly, preferably along with the theft report. Even roving officers could use their iPhones to aid this process.
So, get robbed, make a report to a Merto station, get on the web and kill the iPhone all in a few minutes.
The faster it happens, the less and less a stolen iPhone is worth until it is zero, the more criminals learn this the less likely they are to steal in the first place.
Also, I see a joint marketing campaign between Apple and municipal governments to educate bad guys. That could be interesting.
While a kill switch is a great start, from my understaanding of the process so far, the user needs to initiate the kill... which means if a thief can wipe the phone soon after theft then the user's killswitch doesn't apply.
So I think that Metro/transpo/police offices need to have available to consumers a computer so the killswitch can be activated quickly, preferably along with the theft report. Even roving officers could use their iPhones to aid this process.
So, get robbed, make a report to a Merto station, get on the web and kill the iPhone all in a few minutes.
The faster it happens, the less and less a stolen iPhone is worth until it is zero, the more criminals learn this the less likely they are to steal in the first place.
Also, I see a joint marketing campaign between Apple and municipal governments to educate bad guys. That could be interesting.
I like that the phone makers are involved in this, it could be a feature that sways someone from buying one phone vs another.
I am pretty sure it is already on - if the thief grabs it and resets the phone they need your iCloud account to activate it. They will still be able to use the phone under your current account until you remotely lock it, but they won't be able to reset and sell it.
Unfortunately what you miss is that all the crimes are not just the lifting of the phone, but often include assault, battery and sometimes murder.
I'm not saying that the S.F. DA should be involved but he does have a vested interest. If you can prevent the crime by taking the value out of the item he and the police can concentrate on those crimes that are serious in nature.
With that being said, being able to lock and or disable the phone is a good thing. I'm sure jailbreaking would kill this feature on iOS.
As for Android, you could bake the activation into a ROM. With a locked bootloader you wouldn't be able to flash the device unless the OS was signed.
Anyway, I like the concept.
Oh please. You haven't read at all what Apple is doing, have you? There's no kill switch. But whoever wants to use the iPhone, needs to know _your_ AppleID and _your_ password, and there is absolutely no way around it. Wiping the phone won't help at all.
It might not work if _you_ jailbreak your own phone, but then that's a problem you created for yourself. It definitely works if someone steals your phone and tries to jailbreak it. They won't be able to activate it ever again.
hope it will help reduce theft, no matter how you try and protect something, someone is still gonna get past your awesome security.
just reduce it, make it a hard process to accomplish if you still the "iPhone"
just reduce it, make it a hard process to accomplish if you still the "iPhone"
Yeah the phone companies should be responsible for fixing this. That way we don't have to prosecute the criminals as usual.
Why does law enforcement care about stolen phones? A stolen phone is a phone they don't need a warrant to tap! Surely the phone companies know in 5 minutes when a stolen device pops up with a different SIM from an unregistered owner.... The phones are almost always used for something juicy like running drugs, so their value as bait is way more than returning it.
Really? I haven't seen that to be the case at all, but let's say that this is indeed true.
Why is it Apple's responsibility to combat theft? There is a lot of TV theft out there, but I don't see people calling on Vizio, Sharp, etc. to combat that. Why not? Because it's not their responsibility, that is the customer's responsibility to take reasonable measures to protect their property. It is also the job of the police to recover stolen goods.
By that logic when I'm trading my lines around by changing SIMs I'm suddenly suspect of illegal activities??
Sorry man, that's a major stretch in logic. I don't think so.
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It's not their responsibility, just like auto makers don't have to put locks on cars. But it makes the devices more attractive to buyers.
Each generation of iPhone i have lost or had stolen, so what?
Just buy another one... or have phone insurance..
If you don't have a good job and cant afford another one then maybe your phone shouldn't be your main focus, try saving for flat/house instead.
Just buy another one... or have phone insurance..
If you don't have a good job and cant afford another one then maybe your phone shouldn't be your main focus, try saving for flat/house instead.
This sounds like a case of government officials and private industry working together to address an issue without unwieldy oversight, regulations, or financial burden.
It's also some great PR for Apple, and might get those government officials some benefit from the distortion field.
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You make it sound like this is some massive burden on Apple leveled by vindictive consumers and/or regulatory government. It's a nice thing being done by a company, and it has the added benefits of generating a great deal of positive publicity in terms of: a) look what we are doing to make things better for you and protect your property; b) no other major phone company has stepped up to try this; c) this is really only necessary because our devices are in such high demand.
I really don't understand people complaining about this. Where's the problem? Would you be so indignant if your TV company did try to dissuade people from stealing your set?
It's also some great PR for Apple, and might get those government officials some benefit from the distortion field.
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You make it sound like this is some massive burden on Apple leveled by vindictive consumers and/or regulatory government. It's a nice thing being done by a company, and it has the added benefits of generating a great deal of positive publicity in terms of: a) look what we are doing to make things better for you and protect your property; b) no other major phone company has stepped up to try this; c) this is really only necessary because our devices are in such high demand.
I really don't understand people complaining about this. Where's the problem? Would you be so indignant if your TV company did try to dissuade people from stealing your set?
Why not? because you'd create more law enforcement jobs?
And to be clear, not all these cases would be prosecuted by same department.
Besides i don't know why city officials think their time is best spent playing with gadgets and "testing" security features... are they even qualified for this?
Near universal activation of this feature is the only thing that would deter thieves. Unfortunately I don't see this happening. As long as there is even a sizable minority if iPhone users who don't protect their iPhones, thieves will still snatch iPhones when they have the opportunity.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2
Yes they do! lawyers, city officials, executives, always trying to get free stuff.
yeah, correct: that's in UK alone!
If a criminal won't be able to use the phone except when security feature is disabled, then they will make you disable it. Not sure how that will reduce crime.
If the security feature can't be disabled, then you've lost control of your phone to the manufacturer.
rock > you are here < hard place
They got it for free, sell it to a fence for even $50 and they are up in the game.
Remember, despite the press, the majority of iPhone thefts are pickpocketing, run/ride by and snatch, grabbed out of empty cars or picked up off tables where they were left unattended while you put sugar in your coffee, grabbed a book off the shelf etc
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You need to update your knowledge, it is not 2010. iOS software cannot be loaded on the phone without a call to Apple for a digital signature. They stop "signing" an OS version within a week of the next one coming out, there is only ONE supported version. The only way around this is to mimic the signing with SHSH blobs, as mentioned. Which you must create yourself with your phone after jailbreaking. You won't have them if you steal my phone, for instance.
I believe 6.1.3 is the current public version, and you cannot even revert to 6.1.2.