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- Apr 25, 2006
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I've been rolling this idea around for awhile in my head. Mentioned it to a few people to see if maybe I'm just imagining things, but no, I seem to have a good idea that makes alot of sense..
My iPod.. It's got a serial number.. It has to have a serial number to register with the computer, so the computer knows which iPod is plugged in.. So.. That serial number could be registered with apple (not for sure that it is or isn't right now). Registered to YOU, maybe using a couple secret passphrases or something even. Now, two ideas.. One, if you want to register this iPod with a new computer, iTunes looks up your iPod, finds that it's registered and asks you for your password or whatnot before it'll let you register it to put songs onto it. At the same time it could be locking down the iPod so it stops working until successful authentication has happend. This would prevent the iPod from ever being used after being stolen.
Second idea.. You're iPod comes up stolen, you click a button in iTunes that alerts Apple. This alerts them that your iPod is missing, they can do one of two things, report back to you with information every time someone uses your iPod, so maybe you can alert the authorities (not too useful on a "petty theft" type of cheap item.), or since they know it's stolen they can now lock the unit down if someone else tries to register it. Obviously, they'd need a way to unregister your unit if you sell it, but that'd be easy enough to do as well.
I think this would go a LONG way toward preventing all the blatant iPod thefts and even down right muggings. It'd be really easy for Apple to implement, and I can only see greedy reasons not to implement it...
My iPod.. It's got a serial number.. It has to have a serial number to register with the computer, so the computer knows which iPod is plugged in.. So.. That serial number could be registered with apple (not for sure that it is or isn't right now). Registered to YOU, maybe using a couple secret passphrases or something even. Now, two ideas.. One, if you want to register this iPod with a new computer, iTunes looks up your iPod, finds that it's registered and asks you for your password or whatnot before it'll let you register it to put songs onto it. At the same time it could be locking down the iPod so it stops working until successful authentication has happend. This would prevent the iPod from ever being used after being stolen.
Second idea.. You're iPod comes up stolen, you click a button in iTunes that alerts Apple. This alerts them that your iPod is missing, they can do one of two things, report back to you with information every time someone uses your iPod, so maybe you can alert the authorities (not too useful on a "petty theft" type of cheap item.), or since they know it's stolen they can now lock the unit down if someone else tries to register it. Obviously, they'd need a way to unregister your unit if you sell it, but that'd be easy enough to do as well.
I think this would go a LONG way toward preventing all the blatant iPod thefts and even down right muggings. It'd be really easy for Apple to implement, and I can only see greedy reasons not to implement it...