NYPD Handing Flyers Urging People to Upgrade to Apple iOS 7, But Why?

The New York Police Department (NYPD) officers were handing out flyers to people in the street of New York urging them to register their devices to “NYPD’s Operation Identification Program.”

The flyers shouting “ATTENTION APPLE USERS!!!!” aim to promote the latest Apple operating software as to make devices more secured.

One of the people who received a flyer posted above was uploaded by Michael Hoffman in his Twitter account with a tweet: 'Four uniformed NYPD officers were at my subway stop tonight asking me to upgrade to iOS 7. Not a joke!'

It seems that the NYPD, particularly the 78th precinct, is pretty serious about protecting its citizens as it clearly promotes the Find My Phone Activation Lock feature of the new software. This new feature will protect an Apple device once stolen or lost as reprogramming it will be impossible without an Apple ID and password, unless the thief knows how to hack it.

Aside from handing flyers in the N.Y streets, the police department is also promoting the upgrade in the social networking site Facebook through Park Slope Parents participaton, AllThingsD reports.

A previous research found that 113 smartphones are either stolen or lost in the U.S every minute which usually happens in a fast food chain or a grocery store. About 40 percent of robbery cases in New York were linked to smartphones with 70 percent involving Apple devices stolen on the subways or buses.

The iOS 7 has been available for free download since Sept. 18. Aside from Find My Phone, there are other features that Huffington Post claimed to make improvements on the daily lives of device users. The said features include blocking unwanted calls and text messages, seeing the timestamps of the messages in iMessage, quick access to commonly used apps and settings using the Control Center, and listening to iTune Radio.