It used to be a huge problem when thieves would steal smartphones from their victims on the street. This is because security in phones back then wasn’t so good, but now thanks to fingerprint scanners and features like Activation Lock, and also built-in kill switches, smartphone theft is actually starting to go down.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said for smartwatches, like the Apple Watch for instance, which is probably one of the more expensive smartwatches in the market at the moment and the most desired given how much in demand it is to the point where Apple can’t keep up. This was pointed out by the folks at iDownloadBlog who have expressed their incredulity at the fact that the wearable lacks similar security features that Apple’s iOS devices are enjoying, like Activation Lock for example.
Jeff Benjamin at iDownloadBlog even conducted a little experiment where he showed how easy it was to reset the Apple Watch, unpair it from his current phone, and pair it with a new phone that has a completely different Apple ID. In fact one could even bypass the passcode to wipe the watch. The upside is that if the thief is trying to get into your device, the passcode will protect it, but if they plan on wiping it and reselling it, then it’s pretty much useless.
One of things that they point out Apple could do is to remember the Apple ID used to pair with your iPhone, and when someone tries to unpair it or reset the device, the Apple ID password is required. That’s just one of the many possible security features Apple could consider, so hopefully this is something the Cupertino company is already thinking about.
Filed in . Read more about Apple Watch, Smartwatch and Wearable Tech.