Steve Jobs

Since the U.S. government has legally authorized jailbreaking we were wondering about Apple’s steps to counter this move. Apparently, Apple is trying hard to get its monopolistic hold on the iDevices, it has applied for a patent covering various methods for identifying and disabling unauthorized use (which includes jailbreaking) of its popular iPhone and iPad products.

Apple’s  patent  is  titled “Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device,” would also protect Apple against jailbreaks and other unauthorized hacks to the device, which were recently excepted from copyright enforcement by the US Copyright Office’s Librarian of Congress.

The patent  focuses on measures for identifying stolen devices and protecting the kinds of sensitive information, such as credit card numbers and passwords, stored on those devices. Upon learning that a customer’s iPhone has been stolen, for instance, sensitive data stored on that customer’s device could be sent to one of Apple’s remote storage servers and then erased entirely from the phone. So far so good, the real catch is that the patent also covers methods for identifying devices that have been hacked, jailbroken, unlocked or had their SIM cards removed.