Legal Niches

Apple Files Patent for Jailbreaking Detection Methods

By james_fudge

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

Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on August 23, 2010 (boomark / email).