

Busting an iPhone thief - bensummers
http://iphonetheif.blogspot.com/2010/01/iphone-theif-bust.html

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lliiffee
See that, potential thief? If you steal a phone, there is a 95% probability
that you keep it, sure, but a 5% probability that you stole it from a
motivated technically competent person who will track you down and ... _make
you give it back_. That huge downside risk will certainly will prevent you
from stealing things in the future!

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mikeryan
I'm going to reiterate this point (I actually just said it a few days ago)

Set up MobileMe to track your device _before_ you lose/get stolen your iPhone.

You can't set it up after the fact. Which painfully sucks.

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mahmud
Your timestamped movements are a marketer's wet-dream. And since the iphone
can both display advertising AND make purchases, said marketer has even more
incentive to flip around your life in his OLAP tools like a rubic's cube.

I would go as far as to say that a marketing company _should_ subsidize an
iphone if the user agrees to install their version of "MobileMe".

~~~
tspiteri
I agree that MobileMe is a privacy concern, but I don't agree that the problem
comes from marketers. An automated program will serve you ads which are
relevant to where you are, and it is unlikely that a marketer can get directly
to your data. The real problem is when people who do should not have access to
your data get it, or when those who can get access legally abuse it.

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bmalicoat
Funny how depending on which side you're on at the time, GPS tracking via
MobileMe is the biggest invasion of privacy ever or a godsend.

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slapshot
I would much prefer a version of MobileMe that I can remotely activate -- I do
not want my every movement being stored in some database on the off chance
that it will be useful. I would much rather activate it when I need it, LoJack
style.

~~~
rsynnott
Erm, that's how MobileMe works. It doesn't store your every movement; that'd
burn through battery life pretty quickly. It gets a position when you tell it
to from the website; presumably the order comes over the same channel push
messages do.

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lylejohnson
It's similar to the story that Clay Shirky uses in the opening of _Here Comes
Everybody_ , although the phone in that story wasn't an iPhone, and the
emphasis was more on how the victim "crowdsourced" the phone's recovery.

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NathanKP
What a brilliant story. You almost have to feel sorry for the thief, who
obviously had no idea what he was getting himself into.

I like the way Apple has provided all the tools needed to stalk an iPhone
thief, at least until they jailbreak the phone. I've heard some people
complain about such GPS tracking features being a privacy issue, but clearly
they are handy when your iPhone is stolen.

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lanstein
erm, 'thief' is spelled wrong both in the domain name and in the page name.

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delackner
Of course if Apple went one step further -- build this feature in for free --
then they might reduce to nearly zero the incentive people have to steal the
iPhone.

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rationalbeaver
Note for Android folks: There is no MobileMe for Android, but there is a
similar app called Mobile Defense (and it's free!). I downloaded it after
reading this.

