ICaughtU Uses iPhone Front Camera To Snap Photo On Incorrect Passcode
Smartphones replaced a lot of things in our lives with their advent; portable media players, handheld gaming devices, personal information managers (PIMs) and contact books are just a few of the categories that got combined in one smartphone, handling everything from communications to information management to entertainment. Apple’s iPhone, being the most popular choice for smartphone owners as of now, is no exception, and perhaps more prone to data theft than others, as the basic protection it offers is plainly a passcode. What if you want to enhance the security on your device with, say, identity of the thief (or attempting thief, to be exact)? Well, if you’re jailbroken and having a front-camera equipped iOS device (iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G or iPad 2), you’re in luck, because ICaughtU jailbreak tweak aims to do just that. Details after the break.
Available on the BigBoss repository (just search for ICaughtU in Cydia), this tweak captures a photo from the front-facing camera on your iDevice when a wrong passcode is entered, hopefully capturing the face of the person attempting to unlock your device. It will also send an email alert to a predefined address, containing the snapped photo as well as the location of the device pointed on Google Maps.
The package, once installed, will not add any icon to your device’s Springboard, and settings can be accessed under Extensions in the native Settings app. You get a toggle for saving a copy of the snapped picture to Photos app, specify the email address for sending email, set the maximum number of attempts before a photo is taken (0 means disabled), set a custom alert to show when photo is taken (get your mocking hats on!), to name a few.
Once the tweak is configured, and a passcode has been set, the next time an incorrect entry is made, you will get an email notification, as will as the custom alert displaying on the device. If you’ve set the number of fail attempts to more than one, that limit will have to be reached before an alert is generated.
The email notification contains the location of the device as well as a photo of the culprit. Sample screenshot (with a mug-shot of the thief) can be seen below.
A few caveats to mention with this otherwise-quite-useful tweak. One, since an email is generated, your device needs to have an active data connection (WiFi or cellular). Second, for location to be captured, location services need to be turned on, with ICaughtU having permission to use those. Third, your device must be running iOS 4 or above, as ICaughtU is incompatible with older versions of iOS. Also, while this will work on third-generation iOS devices and first-generation iPad running iOS 4 or above, no picture will be caught due to lack of front-facing camera.
ICaughtU also comes in a Pro flavor (also available on BigBoss repo) with a price tag of $2.50. With the paid version, you get additional features like the ability to send an SMS alert as well for attempted break-in (iPhone only), a timestamp for the incorrect entry and compatibility with the infamous AndroidLock XT. The developer promises many more features in near future, so stay tuned.
ICaughtU was tested on iPhone 4 running iOS 5.0, jailbroken with sn0wbreeze.
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How does iCaughtU works? can someone tell me cause mine can’t send pic to my email I don’t know why? Please help!
I hate you all.
Heh. Nice picture, Zayed.
He posed for this one – wore the pink shirt, even 😛
In years to come I will be able to proudly tell everyone that I was there when this photo was taken.