The Risks of Jaibreaking an IPhone

The proponents of jailbreaking like to gloss over the risks of jailbreaking your iPhone. And trust me, if you don't know what you are doing, the risks are great. You run the gamut of simple device disruption (glitches, freezes and crashing) to complete technical failure (bricked iPhone). It's up to you to decide if the benefits outweight the risks for you.

About Bricked Phones

The purpose of jailbreaking your iPhone is to gain total root access to your iPhone file system. Because you gain that access, the inexperienced technical user can delete critical components of your iPhone system without even realizing it. It also merits mentioning that there have been reports of the jailbreak process itself bricking up your iPhone. To brick your iPhone means that you have an iPhone that is completely unresponsive. It simply lays there like a brick.

Voided Warranty

Some people think jailbreaking is a neat process. You can count Apple among the list of people who don't. In fact, they are so against jailbreaking they tried to get it declared illegal. Apple's stance is that jailbreaking alters their device in such as way that it is a copyright infringement. In July of 2010, the U.S. Copyright Office disagreed and declared that jailbreaking falls under the Fair Use Policy which is an exception to the copyright law. Apple's next step was to declare that jailbreaking is in violation of their terms of service. Any device that is jailbroken is no longer covered by warranty. That means if you brick your iPhone trying to jailbreak it, you get no tech support from Apple trying to fix it.

Product Disruption

Apple has many claims that jailbreaking is bad for their device. In fact, Apple claims that jailbreaking results in product disruption including device instability such as frequent crashing, freezing and loss of data. Apple reports a loss of services such as visual voicemail, Weather and the Stock applications on jailbroken iPhones. Shortened battery life is another claim by Apple stating that the hacking software used drains the battery life and shortens your iPhone operating times.

Compromised Security

Apple has even gone so far as to claim that the jailbreak hackers can steal your information. In an article they posted on their website entitled "Unauthorized modification of iOS has been a major source of instability, disruption of services, and other issues" they claim that the developers of the jailbreak hacks can steal your information, upload viruses and compromise your device at their own whims.