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iOS 7 upgrading urged by prosecutors, politicians

Written by James Delahunty @ 22 Sep 2013 4:38 User comments (1)

iOS 7 upgrading urged by prosecutors, politicians Prosecutors in the United States joined with the mayor of London in recommending that iPhone owners upgrade to iOS 7.
The issue of smartphone theft in urban areas has prompted politicians and prosecutors around the world to push manufacturers to build more anti-theft systems into their devices. On top of the agenda is the "Kill Switch" that would render a device useless remotely in the event that it is stolen.

Manufacturers are reluctant to make such features available, due to the potential for abuse. Still, there are other measures that can be taken that could discourage the theft of devices.

One such feature is the Activation Lock in iOS 7, present on the new iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s. Users of iPhones from iPhone 4 onwards can upgrade to iOS 7.

Prosecutors in New York and San Francisco joined with London mayor, Boris Johnson in urging iPhone owners in their cities to upgrade to iOS 7, earlier this week.



Still, the presence of activation lock in iOS 7 is not likely to bring down the number of smartphone thefts. There will likely need to be an industry-wide effort to tackle the problem.

Tags: Apple iOS 7
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1 user comment

122.9.2013 17:25

Waste of time and effort. Its all about making money. Carriers really don't want to track stolen phones since they would lose out on potential sale of services to whoever received it. It would be a matter of blacklisting the imei on their networks. It would also be good if whoever is attempting to activate the device would be reported to the authorities. This is possible but cost to the carriers to implement such measures would be prohibitive. Just remotely killing the device via software (that could be circumvented) would not stop people from stealing them since you can still just sell them for replacement parts. Unless there were controls in place to stop activation of suspected stolen equipment on the carrier's end AND somehow track parts from said devices there will still be a market for stolen devices.

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