Not everyone can afford MobileMe, and some of us simply don’t need all of the added features and storage space that it has to offer for the $99 price tag, but we all want to be able to track our expensive mobile device in case it is lost or stolen. So what are we to do? Well, there may be some hope. Orbicule recently updated their iPhone and iPod touch tracking app Undercover with the ability to send Push Notificaitons, making it much more worthy of a purchase.
Undercover has always been able to track your iPhone’s location as long as the app is open, but the problem has always been making a thief actually launch the app. Now, in Undercover v1.5, you can at least try to trick a thief into opening the app via a well-worded Push Notification.
Here’s how it works. When you first download Undercover, you will be asked to register your device, for free of course, at Orbicule’s Undercover Center. Once you are all set up on the desktop side of things, simply launch the app again on your iPhone and its location will be logged into the website. From there you can see your iPhone’s current location, IP, and accuracy of location on a Google Map. So now if your iPhone is stolen, you can log into the website and track its last known location, but to get an updated status, your thief is going to have to launch the app, and that’s where the Push Notifications come in.
Via the Undercover Center, you can report your device as stolen. You will have to first fill out some Police details since it isn’t exactly safe to go after your device on your own. After that, you are brought to another page where you can fill out a custom Push Notification message or use one of the default messages to entice your thief to launch Undercover. If your message is convincing enough, your thief will hopefully access your iPhone to follow the notification’s lead, which will launch Undercover. Undercover will take its sweet time loading at this point or load a website of choice to distract the thief while the GPS coordinates and IP address are being sent to Orbicule’s website. Those coordinates will be sent directly to any police officer you have contacted and registered on the website.
Of course, some thieves may be smarter than others, so the Push Notification may not be all that convincing, especially considering it says “Undercover” boldly at the top of the message. According to Orbicule, there is nothing they could do about this, as it is Apple’s policy to display the name of the app at the top of Push Notifications. But as we all know, nothing is perfect, and $4.99 is a small price to pay for even a chance at recovering your stolen device.
You could also use the Push Notification system to inform someone who has found your lost device of how to contact you, so that in and of itself may be worth the price tag.
It’s really too bad that we couldn’t just have apps run in the background to avoid this whole mess, but developers have to work with what’s available to them, so this is a decent solution.
Embedded below is a video demonstration of Undercover in action. It’s very detailed, so it should give you a good idea of what to expect.
You can also download Cylay on Cydia. It is totally free and you dont have to make the thief run the app, you can track it, send a text message to your own cell phone, send a push notification, lock or unlock the phone and so many more things. And it is free!!
Yes, another worthy solution, but Undercover is an option for those who don’t jailbreak.
How is this totally free? 20$ subscription. i guess its still better than mobileme!
Think about this: If a thief steals your iPhone, he will probably turn the phone completelly off and/or replace the SIM card so that it can be used with other service provider. That will disable the Undercover App. I think this app is a waste of money.
No argument there. Like I said, some thieves are more intelligent than others, so your mileage will vary. At least it gives you a chance at getting it back.
Btw, not all thieves are males.
If there is a passcode lock on the phone, they will never be able to even access the push notification
That is a good point. This is all making the MobileMe price not looking as bad as it once did.
MobileMe is worth the price
That Winnie is pretty hot.
I agree with the criticisms above, but I also have one other point I’d like to make.
Even if you don’t have a passcode … even if the thief does not replace the SIM … and even if thief is not very tech savvy … the push notification still says “Undercover” when it pops up. With such a “gotcha” sounding name, I doubt many thieves would click the link.
In your article, you state that the developer cannot do anything about this, because Apple requires the name of the app to appear in the push notification. While Apple does require the name of the app to appear, the developer certainly has the ability to name the app something else, so that the push notification isn’t so obvious.
The name is taken from Orbicule’s other security software for the Mac by the same name. Yes, they could have come up with a different name altogether, but I am sure they wanted to keep their products in line.
You could always write the push notification as a teaser to a voyeur pron site called “Undercover” or maybe just a message about how some ex-gf wants to get under the covers with you and has some pics to share.
Get creative in your social engineering and you can fool even a half-intelligent thief.