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Is Jailbreaking Illegal?

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There are many questions that people have about jailbreaking, but one of the biggest questions is: Is jailbreak illegal?

We’ve answered some other questions about jailbreak, like whether or not it slows down your iPhone or if jailbreaking can hurt iPhone battery life, but perhaps the most important question that users should know about jailbreaking, is whether or not it’s illegal to do so.

It’s certainly a great question, and one that frankly should be asked by users looking to jailbreak their iOS devices. Nothing is as serious as following the law so that you don’t get arrested.

Jailbreaking can technically be seen as a form of hacking. You’re essentially breaking into the iOS code via a security hole in order to modify the software to do what you want it to do.

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There are many different forms of hacking, of course, but many of them are illegal even if they aren’t particularly harmful. Does jailbreaking fit into that category? Here’s what you should know.

Is Jailbreaking Illegal?

It’s easy to see why you might think that jailbreaking is illegal. While most of the things you can do with a jailbreak are harmless, you can use it for bad, like getting paid features for free. Even a few years ago, there was a jailbreak app that let you download pirated copies of paid iPhone apps.

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So, is jailbreak illegal? The short answer is: No, jailbreaking is not illegal. Jailbreaking officially became legal in 2012 when the Library of Congress made an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, allowing users to jailbreak their iPhones. However, iPads didn’t become legal to jailbreak until a couple of months ago, surprisingly.

This means that if you’ve been jailbreaking your iPad for years now, you were technically committing a crime.

Again, jailbreaking can be seen as mostly harmless, but there are some things you can do with it that allow you to actually break the law, like not paying for a paid service, but getting it for free. For instance, a jailbreak app called Flex 2 allows you to get RunKeeper Go features for free, which is a service that normally costs $10 per month.

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Furthermore, a jailbreak tweak called YouTube ++ allows you get YouTube Red features for free, which is a service that normally costs $10 per month. Granted, YouTube ++ has existed long before YouTube Red came around, so that’s certainly a gray area of sorts, but you get the idea.

Was it likely that you’d be prosecuted if you were caught jailbreaking your iPhone when it was illegal? Highly unlikely. In fact, jailbreaking is likely the least illegal thing you’ve done or will do during your lifetime.

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According to a book written by defense lawyer and civil libertarian Harvey Silverglate, the average American commits several federal crimes per day simply because of all the new laws that criminalize more and more things these days, no matter how trivial.

So if you jailbroke your iPhone or iPad during a time when it was illegal, you probably didn’t have much to worry about as far as getting caught, or if you were caught, no one probably would care.

However, jailbreaking your iPhone is now 100% legal, but keep in mind that it’s still not something Apple wants you to do, so much so that if you do jailbreak your iPhone, it will void your warranty with Apple. The good news, is that since jailbreaking isn’t permanent, you can revert back with little trouble and Apple will likely never know the difference when you take your iPhone in for service.

Best iOS 10 Cydia Tweaks: The Ultimate Collection for iOS 10, 10.1 & 10.2

Best iOS 10 Cydia Tweaks

Best iOS 10 Cydia Tweaks

Activator

One of the most popular jailbreak tweaks of all time is Activator, and it's easy to see why. Activator allows you to set up automations as well as shortcuts for all sorts of different actions, like automatically turning on your alarms for the next day and even changing songs using the volume buttons.

This is especially true now that Activator works on iOS 10, so you can combine it with everything that Apple added to iOS 10 and iOS 10.2.

AppDrawer

One of the best features of Android is the app drawer, where all of your installed apps appear when you bring it up. Something like this is awesome, since you don't have to have all of your apps on the home screen, and now the feature is on iOS through Cydia thanks to AppDrawer.

Browser Changer

Do you use a web browser on your iPhone other than Safari? Then it might be nice to actually change iOS's default browser to your preferred one using Browser Changer. This means that any links from other apps will now open in the web browser of your choice and not just default to Safari.

Bytafont 3

iOS 9 added a new San Francisco font that is still in iOS 10. If you're not a huge fan of it, you can use Bytafont 3 to change the font to whatever you want. The possibilities are endless here.

DeleteForever

Not a big fan of the Recently Deleted folder in the Photos app? While there isn't an iOS 10 Cydia tweak to get rid of the folder, you can at least bypass it altogether when deleting a photo.

DeleteForever will allow you to permanently delete photos with one swoop, rather than deleting a photo and then having to delete it again from the Recently Deleted folder.

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Garylking

    01/01/2016 at 7:38 am

    1=5 my buddy’s sister makes $89 /hour on the laptop . She has been unemployed for nine months but last month her payment was $13669 just working on the laptop for a few hours.

    you can check here… See More

  2. Cupertino Geeks

    01/03/2016 at 10:15 am

    Jailbreaking has been made legal by US court back in 201x.

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