

IPad rental service for tourists. Security implications? - mobiplayer
http://www.bcnrentapad.com/

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mobiplayer
I'm working to launch an iPad rental service for tourists in Barcelona and I
want to discuss here the security implications for me and for my customers.

It'll come with unlimited 3G data plan but the sim card will have voice calls
locked (just voip). I'm trying to think of a way to not charge the customers
if an iPad is lost/stolen/broken but anything brilliant didn't come yet. Also,
I need my customers to be safe knowing that all the data will be wiped when
they return the iPad. With iOS 5 I probably could do it without iTunes, but is
it really safe?

Do you see any more problems that I haven't think about?

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makecheck
I'm assuming that you'd use "Find My iPhone" (or iPad) to locate and wipe the
device in case you discovered that someone rented it and never came back. I'm
sort of curious how well that works, because I suspect it wouldn't take long
for someone to try outright stealing a rented device. Could you count on
police to follow that information to track down the stolen property and the
thief?

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mobiplayer
Yes, I'm testing the "Find my iPhone" feature and it works how you expect.
I've read some stories about spanish police using the geolocation data of
stolen smartphones to help recover them.

I still didn't come up with an answer to "What happens if someone brings the
iPad back to their country?". Although I could locate it I probably couldn't
recover it :-\

The only way is having a deposit from the credit card of the customer, but I
don't like to retain some hundred bucks of someone who is on their holidays.

