Apple may emphatically recommend not to jailbreak your iPhone, but here’s yet another instance how jailbreaking has helped catch a thief who had stolen an iPhone.
reddit user G1ngerBear shared his story, about how iCaughtU Pro, one of our favorite jailbreak tweaks helped in identify the woman who had stolen his wife’s iPhone 6, and also her location, so he along with the police could catch her.
My wife and I were at a charity event in south Edmonton today having our pictures taken. We hung up our jackets in the coat room of the church before beginning.
When we finished my wife realized that her phone was not in her coat pocket. I quickly requested her phones location using iCaughtU Pro and saw that it was 10 mins North of us. Thinking this was a mistake I checked the truck and everywhere around quickly and requested the location again. This time it was further north and I got the first image from a failed password attempt in my email. This is the picture of her with the smoke in her mouth.
He then goes on to explain how he managed to find the thief.
I quickly raced over to the nearby police station where I saw a policeman idling in his car. I explained the sitation and after starting a file he asked me to hop in so we could go find her.
Using the pictures and location received from iCaughtU Pro we were able to locate her at a bus stop a few blocks away. As soon as we pulled up she came out with her hands up and said “I didn’t steal it I swear! I just found it on the street. I was bringing it to the police station to return it” To which the police responded “the police station is a block away, it doesn’t look like you were on your way there”. I said to her “that phone is specially programmed to display a message to you asking for the return of the phone if you should find it, it even has a button to press in order to call me so that I can come retrieve it. I dont have any missed calls and I know you got the message because i had a picture of you sent to my phone when you failed to enter the correct password twice and the two go hand in hand. If you had intended on returning it you would have pressed the call button.
She was promptly arrested for possession of stolen property.
While Find my iPhone is a great way to track your lost or stolen iPhone, it is not fool proof. Someone can easily turn it off to prevent your iPhone from being tracked. iCaughtU Pro addresses this by not only preventing someone from turning off your device, it also takes a photo and sends it your email address along with the location when they try to do it, which can be extremely useful in catching the thief. You can also configure it to send the picture and location after someone enters the wrong password. It comes with tons of other powerful features such as sending an SMS when SIM is changed, and ability to issue remote commands using SMS.
G1ngerBear also talks about using the IfFound jailbreak tweak, which puts a button on your iPhone’s lock screen that will provide the finder of your iPhone with all of your contact information required to get in touch with you, if he or she wants to return it.
The police have been concerned about people using such tracking tools for do-it-yourself justice. So the reddit user did the right thing by taking police assistant to nab the thief, we’ve heard some horror stories where the user has confronted the thief on their own, and got into further trouble.
While jailbreaking gets a bad name for piracy, here’s why users will continue to jailbreak. It is not the first, and won’t be the last time, jailbreaking has helping in catching thieves. There are several reasons to jailbreak your device, and iCaughtU Pro is one of the top reason for many jailbreakers.
Let’s hope Apple will add iCaughtU Pro features in iOS 9, to make it even more difficult to steal iOS devices and get away with it.
The beta version of iCaughtU Pro for iOS 8 is available in the http://cydia.itaysoft.com repo, so add it to install it on your iOS device (it is only available if you had purchased it before).
If you haven’t jailbroken your iOS device yet, here’s how you can do so:
[via reddit]
