RFID, Find iPhone, & Theft

AND using bi-modal encryption keys that are depended on phone, and without, leaving further activations impossible without AT&T involvement.

If you had Find My iPhone enabled, no one will be able to activate the phone again without your Apple ID.

Find My iPhone is not advertised as a way to prevent theft other than in that it makes iPhones a less attractive target as they can't be reactivated. Some cities are reporting iOS device thefts are down by 30%.

AT&T is not going to risk endangering its employees physical safety by requiring them to confiscate devices. They are not law enforcement officers.

And I, for one, don't want to give the government (or hackers) any more ways to track me.

However, you can submit your feedback to Apple here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

You seem to be confused.

• AT&T CANNOT re-activate a stolen iPhone if the owner had enabled Find my iPhone and its associated Activation Lock
• If you report a stolen iPhone to AT&T they will blacklist the IMEI, so it cannot be reactivated on any US carrier, even if the owner was careless enough to not activate Find my iPhone.

The only phones being activated are those that did not have Find my iPhone enabled. There is a steady stream of Help requests here from people who bought stolen phones and find they cannot activate them. Thieves still steal iPhones and resell them to unsuspecting buyers, who thus are cheated. There are still buyers who get scammed, but there are far fewer of them. According to law enforcement sources iPhone thefts are down over 30%, and Android phone thefts and black market prices are way up. With similar activation lock type services becoming available for Android that is likely to change also.

IMEI blacklists are not as effective, because they are not honored worldwide, only by selected carriers.

What does LoJack have to do with RFID? LoJack is an active service that requires power and that transmits its location. iPhones already have it, called Find my IPhone. RFID is passive; you must be closer than 1 meter for it to work.

Find my iPhone was never intended as an anti-theft feature. It is purely a convenience feature to help people find lost devices. Activation lock IS an anti-theft feature and a very good one, as it stops people from actually being able to use a stolen device.

In the USA, AT&T and all carriers now participate in a USA universal blacklisting database service as well, as do most (or by now, maybe all ?) Canadian carriers and most Mexican carriers. So the carriers have finally put in place a nearly NA-wide universal blacklist. IF you report your phone stolen to AT&T, they will blacklist it, preventing it from being used on any NA carrier's network (this applies regardless of make or model of device).

News reports in several cities notorious for iPhone theft (NYC, LA) have reported large drops in reported thefts of iPhones and iPad since the introduction of Activation Lock. Many other smart phone manufacturers are also looking into various similar "kill" switches. As far as I know, nobody is looking into an active tracking system to find lost smart phones - the police, I'm sure, are really not interested in such a thing as they don't have time to "war-drive" around scanning for every lost or stolen smart phone. Systems that render ALL devices useless to thieves will ultimately do far more to end theft than chasing individual lost devices ever will.

dsgncr8or wrote:

I think if lojack was on most things that can have them, retrieval through law enforcement could be way easier.

As would law enforcement's survellance of people not accused of any crime. As would hacker's ability to hack into the system and track you for equally scary reasons.

I'm with Ben Franklin on this one.

We all feel for you. I would be extremely unhappy if I lost my iPhone. I grew up in the age before cell phones so I could cope but I don't think I'd like it.

Best of luck.

Glad you got your phone back. Thanks for the example of the effectiveness of Find My iPhone.