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Apple Patents Remotely Disabling Jailbroken Phones
An anonymous reader writes "Apple yesterday applied for a patent to allow remotely disabling electronic devices when 'unauthorized usage' is detected. The patent application covers using the camera to take pictures of the unauthorized user and using GPS to determine location, and it involves ascertaining whether the phone has been hacked or jailbroken, using those as criteria for detecting 'suspicious behavior.' The patent would allow the carrier or any other 'authorized' party to disable or restrict the functionality of the device. Is this Apple's latest tool to thwart jailbreaking?"
...doesn't mean it's legal, right?
1) Unauthorised by whom?
2) Didn't a school district try this recently and get some bad press for it?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
a security measure for stolen iPhones.
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Just don't buy Apple products anymore. End of story.
... to hate on Apple and never purchase any of their products on principle.
It doesn't say the countermeasures would be used BECAUSE the phone is jailbroken, just that this is one of the data it could ascertain. Right?
Wouldn't that kind of action be in violation of the recent ruling that made such actions as jailbreaking legal on personally owned devices? I understand its a warranty violation, but that shouldn't mean that it should allow apple to restrict usage, etc.
Ummm, isn't this probably intended for stolen phones?
'unauthorized usage' means a lot of things. It *could* mean jailbroken, but - to those with a brain - it means the ability to remote wipe your phone, find it if it is stolen, etc. Remote wipe is crucial on the enterprise. While I question the validity of the patent (how long has RIM had remote wipe?), the actions are valid. Jailbreaking is legal, there is nothing Apple can do to that, so get over it.
This has nothing to do with Jailbroken phones. Where did the "anonymous reader" come up with that crap? From the first sentence in the abstract "This is generally directed to identifying unauthorized users of an electronic device." And nowhere in TFA does it say anything about Jailbroken phones. This is simply a twist on lojack.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
It gets even funnier when you remember their old '1984'-based campaign, they've come full circle.
No, the items you keep quoting are obviously merely members of a long list of example techniques for evaluating the likelihood that a phone has been stolen.
There's no conspiracy theory here. Imagine that you were a phone. Someone enters the wrong unlock password a dozen times? Maybe your owner forgot it. You haven't been back to your home a couple days? Maybe your owner is on vacation. But when, IN ADDITION to all that, someone starts trying to unlock you, you'd have a pretty good notion that you're about to be hawked on ebay.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Except they did say "and," they said "or." So you could detect the wrong password being entered too many times or you could detect that someone is trying to jailbreak.
I do not doubt that the system could be used to detect theft (in the normal sense of the word) and disable stolen phones. However, I would not be so quick to assume that the system will only be used to do that. Neither Apple nor AT&T (nor any other cell network) is particularly friendly toward consumers, so why would you doubt that they would try to disable jailbroken phones (particularly since they can no longer claim it is illegal)?
Palm trees and 8
Or, you know, the headline and summary is wrong.
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If they had gone full circle they would anti 1984. They've gone 180 degrees.
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Which is why I hope that now, finally, we can all stop with the "But Apple is a good company" BS. Apple isn't the same company that was run out of a garage by a couple of Berkly hippies, okay? They aren't that company anymore than MSFT is just Gates and Ballmer with Gates writing code and Ballmer pedaling it. Now while Jobs spends good $$$ trying to keep that "hipster off beat" image, that's all it is folks, an image.
So if you don't want the right to tinker, if at the end of the day you only want to do what Apple has pre-approved, or you are into the aesthetics then buy Apple. Nobody is saying they don't design good kit (well except the latest iPhone) but lets not pretend they are anything other than what they are...a high priced PC and consumer device manufacturer with serious control issues. They aren't anymore a "hipster off beat" company anymore than IBM is into punch card manufacturing...those days are long gone, and one could probably argue those days ended when Woz left.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.