Could A PIN On Shutdown Deter iPhone Thieves?

Sasser, co-founder of Panic software, has had a fantastic idea to make stealing iPhones pretty useless. Most savvy thieves know that when you find or steal a smartphone, you shut it down immediately. This stops it being tracked by the carrier and ? in the case of the iPhone ? it stops the user from tracking it, or wiping it from afar.

Cabel?s incredibly simple idea would stop this from happening.

When my phone was stolen in SF last year, they immediately powered it down to stop Find My iPhone. Settings idea: ?Shutdown Requires PIN??

Neat, huh? You need to input your PIN to shut down the iPhone. This actually makes the oft-whined-about non-removable battery into a feature, making it much harder to just whip it out and kill the phone.

There are workarounds, though. Popping the SIM would render it unreachable unless the hapless thief stumbled on one of your known Wi-Fi networks. And simply sticking the thing into a radio-proof bag or box would achieve the same thing.

Still, it would make the iPhone slightly less easy to steal cleanly, and would only require a software tweak.

Charlie Sorrel?sits in his gadget nerve-center in Barcelona, Spain, and spits out words about ?various weird plastic widgets while the sun shines outside his iCave. Previously found at Wired.com's Gadget Lab covering cameras, power cables and sneaking in as much Apple-centric coverage as he could, Charlie spends his rare moments outside perched atop a bicycle and snapping photos. You can follow him on Twitter via?@mistercharlie

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by Charlie Sorrel.

komen chrome for android hatchet leah messer freedom riders 9th circuit court of appeals gisele bundchen tom brady