Is Jailbreak Illegal?

People have a lot of questions about jailbreaking, but one of the biggest questions is: Is jailbreaking illegal?

We’ve answered some other questions about jailbreaking, such as whether it slows down your iPhone or whether jailbreaking will hurt iPhone battery life, but perhaps the most important question users need to know about jailbreak is whether it is illegal to do so. .

This is an absolutely great question and obviously one that should be asked by users who want to jailbreak their iOS device. There is nothing more serious than obeying the law to avoid being arrested.

Jailbreak can technically be seen as a form of hacking. You essentially enter the iOS code through a security hole to modify the software to do what you want it to do.

There are many different forms of hacking, of course, but most of them are illegal, even if they are not particularly harmful. Does jailbreaking fall into this category? Here’s what you need to know.

Is Jailbreak Illegal?

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

So is jailbreak illegal? Short answer: . Jailbreak officially became legal in 2012. Library of Congress grants exemption to Digital Millennium Copyright Actallows users to jailbreak their iPhones. However, iPads surprisingly didn’t become legal to jailbreak until a few months ago.

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

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

Also, a jailbreak tweak called YouTube++ lets you get YouTube Red features for free, a service that normally costs $10 per month. YouTube++ existed long before YouTube Red came along, so this is definitely a gray area, but you get the point.

If you were caught jailbreaking your iPhone even though it was illegal, would you be prosecuted? In an unusual way. In fact, jailbreaking is probably the least illegal thing you’ve ever done or will do in your lifetime.

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

So, if you jailbroken your iPhone or iPad at a time when it was illegal, you probably didn’t have to worry about getting caught, or if you got caught, probably no one would care.

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