While it has been ruled that jailbreaking your phone is not an illegal act, Apple plans on keeping a watchful eye on those individuals that decide to do it to their iPhones, if a recent filing with the patent office is any indication. A patent filed by the company called "Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device" details a number of ways to detect hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking, or the removal of a SIM card from a phone.
Further, the patent details a method for "taking a series of geotagged photographs with the in-built camera and e-mailing them to Apple in order to identify" the user as well as some other far-fetched methods like "voice-print analysis to identify legitimate users" or the "use of a heartbeat sensor." While much of this sounds like a bad sci-fi movie about a big brother government agency tracking users, it should at least bother users that the patent specifically mentions jailbreaking in its langauge.
Source: bit-tech.net
Comments
Re: Apple Files Patent for Jailbreaking Detection Methods
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8
Delicious irony.
Re: Apple Files Patent for Jailbreaking Detection Methods
LMAO its great when you go from being the little guy to the big guy. You seem to forget where you came from.
~Weatherlight~
Re: Apple Files Patent for Jailbreaking Detection Methods
why do poeple still support this product. make a stand and stop buying i phones and i pods and take 5 min to research for a better product.
BCD303 "Speedy thing goes in. Speedy thing comes out."
Re: Apple Files Patent for Jailbreaking Detection Methods
Depends whether the patent was filed before or after Jailbreaking was deemed legal I suppose.
I think it's somewhat more worrying that Apple didn't have a problem with trying to patent a system for surreptuously taking photographs of people using the phone, that has the potential for so much abuse it's terrifying, and yet Apple happily plonk it into the Patent Office without a second thought...
It's particularly worrying when you consider that a great number of phones have the camera pointing away from the face...
And, of course, in order to analyse your voice, they'd have to record your conversation...
Re: Apple Files Patent for Jailbreaking Detection Methods
They are just so desperate to not honor warranties.
Re: Apple Files Patent for Jailbreaking Detection Methods
Wow, Apple taking yet another step towards the dark side. So now they want to make it so our phones can spy on us for them. They do realize it will take all of 30 seconds for someone to launch a class action against that if they ever actually go through with it.