Apple Patent Details Method of Capturing Fingerprints, Photos, and Video of iPhone Thieves

Apple has filed a patent which details methods of capturing biometric data including fingerprints, photos, and video of users trying to access your device without authorization.

In a patent entitled, "Biometric Capture for Unauthorized User Identification", the company notes that various users may attempt to utilize computing devices without authorization. For example, a user's smart phone may be stolen and the thief may attempt to utilize the stolen smart phone. To help identify those users, your device could capture their fingerprints, photo, and more.

A computing device may determine to capture biometric information in response to the occurrence of one or more trigger conditions. The trigger condition may be receipt of one or more instructions from one or more other computing devices, detection of potential unauthorized use by the computing device, normal operation of the computing device, and so on. The computing device may obtain biometric information and may store such biometric information. Such biometric information may be one or more fingerprints, one or more images of a current user of the computing device, video of the current user, audio of the environment of the computing device, forensic interface use information, and so on. The computing device may then provide the stored biometric information for identification of one or more unauthorized users.


This patent may have been inspired by the many instances of iPhone thieves being captured thanks to selfies taken while still logged into the original owners iCloud account. It would definitely be an added deterrent to help prevent theft.

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Read More [via AI]