“This Apple ID has been disabled for security reasons”, the ominous error message reads. What does it mean? Well, it’s no secret that Apple hates it when people jail break their iPhones (of course if Apple would give them what they want, they wouldn’t feel compelled to have jail broken iPhones – jail breaking iPhones happens when iPhone owners can’t get at the things that they want, that they know the phone can do, but which Apple has crippled). Now people with jailbroken iPhones are starting to receive the “This Apple ID has been disabled for security reasons” error message, and have confirmed that their Apple ID (which, among other things, gives you access to the iPhone app store) has been disabled. So, what it means is that Apple has started denying access to iPhones which have been jailbroken.
The new lockdown was first noticed and brought to light by Sherif Hashim, who is one of the better-known iPhone hackers, and has been known to release work-arounds for other iPhone users to use. In particular, he had just announced (but, it is worth noting, not released) a workaround to unlock the new “baseband” iPhone processor, which manages anything in the iPhone that requires an antenna, such as wifi, bluetooth, and the phone function itself.
Hashim said on Twitter that he’d gotten the message “Your Apple ID was banned for security reasons” when trying to access the App store.
Hashim had developed the baseband hack with another iPhone hack developer who calls himself “iH8sn0w” (but whom we believe to be more commonly known as “Jared”), who also found his account (at least one of them) disabled by Apple, with the same “for security reasons” message.
Now, it’s possible that – for now – Apple is going after only high-profile developers who support, even encourage, jailbreaking your iPhone.
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Both Hashim and iH8sn0w noticed that their accounts had been disabled shortly after news of the new baseband work-around had been announced (but, again, not released). It’s impossible to say whether it was specifically this announcement which lead to Apple’s punitive response, or whether the timing was a coincidence and, of course, Apple isn’t talking.
But the fact remains that Apple has proven themselves willing to hit the “disable” button on the Apple ID accounts of people who don’t follow their rules with respect to jailbreaking iPhones.
And while that is certainly their prerogative, and even their right, with so many great smartphone alternatives available now (such as the Android phone line), is it the smartest way to go about things?
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I don’t think this article should be just for jailbreak phones only because i haven’t attempted to jail break my phone considering i just bought it before i left on deployment. I was only typing my password in to Itunes and by the 3rd try it popped up with that message. How do i enable it again.
I don’t think Apple would disable all jailbreak user account, because they take a 30% cut from every app sold. Sure they hate jail-breaking, but I think they would like making money even more.