Re:Tracking Down a Stolen iPhone
by stcredzero on Monday June 22, 2009 @04:55PM
(#669430)
Apple store personnel treat iPhones/iPods like cord wood. If it breaks, you often just get a new set of hardware. The iPhone might require a sim swap. Given that, there is a financial/technological fix: insurance plus customer service.
On the technological side, send a signal to erase the contents of the phone and permanently disable it. Apple could then give you a new phone. This could be a service like AppleCare, but which would expire every time you used it.
"permanently disable it" - self destruct on a text message :)
Re:Tracking Down a Stolen iPhone
by stcredzero on Monday June 22, 2009 @08:15PM
(#669615)
You'd want to use really big public keys for that one.
I found myself doing just about the same thing (eerily similar settings in my neighborhood in Brooklyn) when my girlfriend's iPhone was stolen just a few days before WWDC and the Find My iPhone announcement.
At the time I wished for nothing more than this exact technology, but days later when we were reasonably sure we had found (through a few degrees of separation) who had stolen the phone and were still unable to get it back, it dawned on me that this might be one of those social issues that will go mostly technologically unsolved at least for the time being.