Better alternatives to Find My iPhone?

[sweenish]

After a brief episode where a friend's iPhone was stolen (later recovered thanks to Find My iPhone and the thief's stupidity), I was wondering if there is another app that does it any better?

Because as I understand it, if you pull out/exchange the SIM and then wipe/reset (actions that don't require the account holder to do any kind of authentication as far as I know) the phone, Find My iPhone is pretty worthless. In other words, had the thief had half a clue, my friend would have never seen his phone again.

Disclosure, I'm an Android person. This incident caused me to add a pin lock to my phone and install a security app that is resistant to factory resets and SIM card changes. In fact, if a new SIM is installed, it automatically sends alerts to up to three contacts of my choosing and locks the phone down by itself. In other words, I am still able to track my device even after a pulled/exchanged SIM and after a factory reset.

If any of my information on Find My iPhone is incorrect, please correct me. If there are better alternatives, I would love to know about them so I can recommend them to my iOS-using friends.

 

[TuxDave]

If he pops out the SIM card and uses it as a iTouch, it'll do the best it can with wifi tracking. If he wipes the phone, I'm guessing it's gone.

Not to side track too much, that's actually a very interesting OS compromise.

1) If you're installing security software and you want to protect it against even factory wipes, that's kind of nice to be able to do that.
2) But if YOU can do that, given some level of stupidity, malicious apps can do that too and it essentially becomes a root kit that is really hard to detect and remove.

 

[TheStu]

With iOS 7, Find My iPhone does exactly that. Once you have it enabled, and need to track the device, it will ping its location as soon as you start looking for it. If the thief takes it and turns it off, when they turn it back on, it will start pinging.

If you tell it to wipe the phone (which you can), then it will do so as soon as it establishes a net connection. If the thief wipes the phone, they won't be able to use it, it will be tied to your account. The only way to make that iDevice work again is to have the proper owner log into it.

 

[bearxor]

Yes, iOS 7 will basically fix your issues with Find My iPhone.

Otherwise, there's no real alternative to it because nothing is able to run as low level as it.

 

[umrigar]

Prey, maybe? not sure if it fits the bill for what you want it to do.

 

[MotionMan]

After a brief episode where a friend's iPhone was stolen (later recovered thanks to Find My iPhone and the thief's stupidity), I was wondering if there is another app that does it any better?

Because as I understand it, if you pull out/exchange the SIM and then wipe/reset (actions that don't require the account holder to do any kind of authentication as far as I know) the phone, Find My iPhone is pretty worthless. In other words, had the thief had half a clue, my friend would have never seen his phone again.

Disclosure, I'm an Android person. This incident caused me to add a pin lock to my phone and install a security app that is resistant to factory resets and SIM card changes. In fact, if a new SIM is installed, it automatically sends alerts to up to three contacts of my choosing and locks the phone down by itself. In other words, I am still able to track my device even after a pulled/exchanged SIM and after a factory reset.

If any of my information on Find My iPhone is incorrect, please correct me. If there are better alternatives, I would love to know about them so I can recommend them to my iOS-using friends.

With iOS7, what you said is wrong. You cannot turn off Find My iPhone without the passcode.

Now, when people sell their iPhones, they have to disable their passcodes, otherwise the buyers will not be able to do much with their phones (The same is true for people who steal phones).

MotionMan

 

[BarkingGhostar]

So none of these Find Mu iPhone features work in iOS 6? I use it on my iPads and iPhones and the app seems to offer me all of the mentioned features as far as I can remember.

 

[MotionMan]

So none of these Find Mu iPhone features work in iOS 6? I use it on my iPads and iPhones and the app seems to offer me all of the mentioned features as far as I can remember.

It works just fine on iOS6. However, the security features discussed above only came in to existence on iOS7.

MotionMan

 

[sweenish]

Good to know that iOS 7 beefed it up. I'm still surprised that it took this long for it to gain that kind of security, though. Better late than never.

If he pops out the SIM card and uses it as a iTouch, it'll do the best it can with wifi tracking. If he wipes the phone, I'm guessing it's gone.

Not to side track too much, that's actually a very interesting OS compromise.

1) If you're installing security software and you want to protect it against even factory wipes, that's kind of nice to be able to do that.
2) But if YOU can do that, given some level of stupidity, malicious apps can do that too and it essentially becomes a root kit that is really hard to detect and remove.

The user would have to be stupid enough to manually grant the malicious app Device Administrator privileges, so if malware did imbed itself like that, it's completely on the user.

 

[TuxDave]

Good to know that iOS 7 beefed it up. I'm still surprised that it took this long for it to gain that kind of security, though. Better late than never.

The user would have to be stupid enough to manually grant the malicious app Device Administrator privileges, so if malware did imbed itself like that, it's completely on the user.

Aka, the "click ok on every pop up" users.

 

[sweenish]

I know they exist, and I do what I can to train those around me.