iCaughtU Pro review [iPhone]

Privacy this, privacy that. Apple hit me with gigantic anti-privacy bat.

It's a real buzz word these days, is privacy. We've been pestered to the point of insanity on the phone, the door step, and every time we put our name on a form, and it's become an even bigger issue in the digital age. Companies and the equipment they sell us collect enough data about our lives to program an army of evil - or good, we suppose - robot us'es.

But sometimes the privacy sledgehammer swings in the opposite direction thanks to apps like iCaughtU Pro. This is a jailbreak app that looks to protect your interests, for a change, and limit the privacy of whoever is currently in possession of your device and trying to get past its passcode lock.

With the app installed and running, a photo is taken using the forward-facing camera (as long as your device has one) whenever the passcode is entered wrongly. Naturally this hinges on you using the rather inconvenient passcode lock feature that's built into the iPhone, but if security wasn't an issue for you this app probably wouldn't hold much appeal anyway.

Once a pictures of the person tapping on your iPhone has been snapped, it is emailed off to the default address you put in the settings. Accompanying the photo is a GPS location of where it was taken and at what time, so you know only know who has your iPhone, but where they are. It's here that iCaughtU Pro quickly begins to differentiate it from Apple's great Find My iPhone service, and also demonstrates where Cupertino could evolve its current system.

If you're a little less paranoid, you can set iCaughtU Pro to only take a picture after a specific number of failed attempts. There's one small gap in the story, which is that you might well not get this message given that you obviously don't have your iPhone, but the developer has thought about that, too.

An SMS text message can be sent from any number when the passcode is entered wrong, so even though you might not immediately know that someone's trying to fathom their way past your passcode, you can have your iPhone tell someone a little more trustworthy.

It's not impossible that someone has found your iPhone, rather than taken it, of course, and iCaughtU Pro offers an option for an on-screen message that gives such Samaritans a way to get in touch with you.

This all sounds like it could be a little complicated to set up, but the system works entirely through a standard iPhone settings page that's very easy to follow. All the features are yours to command, and entering the owner details is as easy as a contacts entry.

Whether or not iCaughtU Pro will get your lost iPhone back to you safe and sound is hard to guarantee, but it's currently the most robust option for bringing about that happy conclusion. You might just want to spy on anyone who's tampering with your digital shit, but either way this app is the one that delivers those anti-privacy goods.