I think that the ‘Find My iPhone’ feature baked into iOS is a great tool, but it’s fundamentally flawed.
Here’s the flaw, and it’s stunningly simple.
Let’s say I’m in a bar and I take a call or answer a txt or email on my iPhone, but then I get distracted and leave it somewhere (and don’t say it can’t happen …). Now imagine that it’s a bar in a shady part of town and my iPhone is found by some miscreant before the lock screen kicks in (which I have set to 5 minutes, because anything shorter than that gets tedious). Now here’s the problem … why is this person now able to go into Settings > Location Services and disable MY ability to find MY iPhone without having to enter a password or anything? What’s worse, doing this simple operating INFORMS SAID BAD GUY THAT IT DISABLES MY ABILITY TO FIND MY PHONE!
This is crazy. Disabling Find My iPhone should, at the very least, require the password to be reentered, and better still require logging into MobileMe (or iCloud or whatever it’s going to end up being called). I know that if your hardware falls into the bad guy’s (or gal’s) hands anything is possible, but I don’t expect hiding MY iPhone from ME to be this darn simple.
This is dead easy to fix. To be honest, it’s such a dumb design that I have no idea why it’s not already been fixed.
Hey, Apple! FIX IT!!!
[UPDATE: Here's a workaround sent in to me by Toby:
Even if you leave the phone open and not at lock screen you can prevent someone turning off Find My iPhone.
Go to Settings --> General --> Restrictions
You'll be prompted to put in a lock code.
Now select "Location Services".
So now anyone that tries to change settings related to Location Services will need to enter the passcode, even if the phone was open and in apps or whatever.
It works, but I really think that this setting should be default, and perhaps rely on using your MobileMe password for authentication rather than the iPhone passcode.]
