iPhone thieves collared by Jobsian GPS A trio of blundering brigands have been busted after an iPhone they had stolen betrayed their whereabouts. This tale of technology overcoming uninformed criminality comes to us from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which reported Monday that an unnamed victim was robbed of his iPhone and wallet early Sunday morning. Apparently, …
Why don't all phones have this? It would destroy the stolen phone market in one generation, oh but of course, the phone insurers would lose an easy tenner a month (or however much it is), scam.
Or at least give us the option of remote bricking our phones so the little yobs lose out on their £20 sell on fee.
@Sorry:
You should jailbreak his phone and then let it be found. Would be very funny the next time there's a firmware update :-)
@All expensive kit should have this feature.
Ab-so-lu-te-ly no way. You're already far too trackable as it is, you would not want to have to worry about this kit being used against you. The only acceptable trackers are those than remain 100% under your control, and given that the iPhoney (as well as Google Latitude) are in principle US you can forget about that. Given the recent legal abuse in Germany (buying stolen data from Liechtenstein despite that being illegal under EU law) I guess it's now only going to take some vague allegation of tax fraud to get the phone in your shiny Mercedes tapped too. Oh, and your ordinary, non-iPhone UK phone does just the same - and even a council has rights to demand the location records (council tax evasion is apparently a valid argument).
If they want me they might as well work for it - that ensures they first have to decide if I'm worth the expense (I'm not, incidentally, but I get pissed off about those that should be under the most strict legal control of all just do as they please).
Anon because I only trust El Reg..
Most of mine does. All of my computers fetch a webpage from a site I control when they are powered on. From this I can get the IP address and the police can then track the location.
Wherever possible I buy hardware with embedded linux (switches, print servers etc) so that I can modify the firmware to do the same.
Obviously this depends on the equipment being able to access the internet once its been stolen, but its better than nothing.
In theory, all GSM mobiles are trackable. Each mobile has a unique ID called the IMEI - when you connect to the service, the mobile tower knows which phone it is talking to not just by the SIM's IMSI number but also the phone's IMEI number. Switch SIMs and the carrier still knows which handset is being used. If you are in an urban carrier cell then you are likely to be within range of more than one mast, so the phone companies can triangulate your position. If you check inside your mobe you'll usually find an IMEI number under the battery (sorry, iBoner's, that's under the removeable and replaceable battery that other phone users enjoy). Otherwise call your carrier and ask for the IMEI - if the phone gets stolen they can track or block it by the IMEI number. The carriers can pass this info to the Police to help them track down mobile thieves, which is why the pro crims usually remove the battery immediately and send the phone abroad, whilst the i-want-to-go-to-jail kiddies will try and flog it down the pub.
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