In a mission to convince Apple and major carriers in the US to implement some sort of fool proof mechanism to disable stolen mobile phones, District Attorney George Gascón scheduled meeting with each one of them to discuss the possibility of doing something. In the lengthy discussion George had with Apple’s government liaison Michael Foulkes, which was quite underwhelming, he discussed about Apple’s future plans for its range of iPhones. Though Michael did not reveal any specifics about the future version of iPhones and its features he assured that making any hardware changes is not possible in the near future as Apple already had the designs for the next two version of iPhones ready, which were done under the guidance of Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs itself.
George was particular in solving the problem in collaboration with Apple because almost 50% of the theft cases reported involve Apple devices as they command a really strong price in second hand markets. Last year all the major carriers in the US collaborated to form a common data base of lost and blocked devices so as to block any lost/stolen devices across all major networks in the US but the problem seems to be more complicated.
Most of the stolen devices are typically either used on smaller carriers in the US or are exported overseas so that nothing can be tracked! Apple implemented a small software called “Find My iPhone” that will essentially track the presence of the device using GPS but most of the times the solution fails to work as any thief stealing the device will either switch off the device immediately or disable the software.
We have seen multiple systems being planned by various companies in providing security to the devices as an anti-theft program but almost all of them seem to be totally fool proof. We hope that Apple will be able to work out something and help their customers in tracking lost/stolen devices.
Source: AppleInsider