Ok, I want to know when person X (any person using a mobile phone) is reachable, so I can voice call him.

Some fascinating observation, just because you have GSM service, that does not mean you have data service (especially when one is at the edge of network coverage, or e.g. while roaming).

With SMS, you send a nice message with "delivery report" enabled, and the next time that teenager with behaviour problems is reachable, your phone will notice you via the delivery report. Next step, call said teenager (that sadly happens to be related to this parental unit), and discuss your concerns.

Basically, SMS is standarized part of the GSM standard for decades now. With rather exact semantics. Apple tried to implement a short circuit this with their own service, and by doing so broke the semantics of this (in some way nowadays very simplistic looking) service.

So it's absolutely correct that they get sued. The sad reality is that repeated inability to receive and/or send messages can cause significant damage.

(send: "Hi Boss! My kid is in the hospital, will contact you in a couple of hours" => depending upon the boss you might find yourself out of work if you disappear for a couple of hours, and hospitals tend to have poor reception. Same thing the other way: "Hi John! We do have an issue here with VIP customer, please call me ASAP".)

I know, that might sound over the top, but I have lost a contract in a similar scenario (you only need to have a team lead with a bad temper, that has a bad day).

I mean, getting removed from iMessage is not really something that Apple planned.

Even if you deregister from iMessage, it might take 45(!!!) days till your phone number gets removed from all databases.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

Well, you have to sell it under a brand that sounds like "Cisco" ;)

Actually, that depends strongly on the jurisdiction, "tampering with email" is a crime e.g. in Germany.

I guess "deactivate" and "impair" would fit the case?

How does a niche payment system have to do with the flaw?

At least as funny as job description looking for "Phyton developers".

Well, Nazi Germany did it too.

Interestingly, not even the evil Communists did this, they might have issued passports (with the note that they do not authorize the holder to return to their country), but even in the Cold War period, if you managed to emigrate legally, they let you take your property with you.

Which btw is atypical, most other countries link "paying taxes" to "residency". The US also have an "exit tax" which you pay if you want to get rid of the US citizenship. The only other occurrence of such a sick thing that comes would be how the Nazis treated emigrating Jews.

One really has to wonder how this civil forfeiture thing managed to survive without being challenged as unconstitutional, I mean the protection of property is rather spelt out in the US Constitution.

Funny, the product works for technical reasons in some parts Europe only.

Now, while drugs are illegal in most places here (for most drugs even in every place), the whole "War on Drugs" thing is an US-only aberration. Basically any drug trafficking that would draw the police (hint: we don't have that war thingie, and we don't have a standalone DEA, drugs are in most European countries handled as part of the regular police work) is so obvious, big, and visible that some frequency scanners would not help the perps.

Not for a WLAN name. It's one thing to try to impersonate somebody, but having some name in the WLAN, ...

Ok, guess it's a serious crime to have a WLAN called "I'll kill you if you use me"?

Sorry, since when is naming a WLAN grounds for criminal action? And what consists an "illegal" WLAN name?

Is it illegal to have a WLAN "Honeypot" because a group of "people strongly allergic to honey" start to go into panic seeing "Honeypot" on their phone?

Funny, now that you mention, I've got reasonably priced "metered" SIM cards in my phone and tab, plus a personal Mifi hotspot with a true flat fee sim card. The SIMs are from different operators, so I can get connectivity on 2 of the 3 local physical mobile networks.

So situations where I'd use any "public" wlan are rather sporadic, and limited to situations where mobile coverage is shit.

Most home routers won't work in a public setting, nowadays:

Please consider, that by default such devices are setup to provide DHCP from a small range of addresses.

Typically, SOHO router will provide less than 128 IP addresses. The problem is that they hand it out in a way that is tuned to a more stable environment, in ISP routers herearound I've seen 24h as a typical lease period. So if you have enough repeat customers, are located in an area that has spotty mobile coverage, people tend to get no IP address more often than you would prefer. Notice that in such situation, using a (semi-) random IP address from the network works quite well (but while you can do it easily enough on a laptop via tcpdump, figuring out network address, gateway and so on is not feasible on mobiles/tabs).