How to help jailbreak future iOS updates

Despite the overwhelming success of Apple's "walled garden" approach to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, many users still wish to part ways with the benefits of control in favor of the unbridled technology (good and bad) available when jailbreaking iOS. If you are one of those users, you can actually become an integral part of the jailbreaking community.

Jailbreaking your iOS device largely depends on finding exploits in the iOS code that hackers can use to take control of the operating system and install applications and functions not approved by Apple. Those exploits can be found a number of different ways, one of which is by analyzing crash reports.

And that's where you come in.

Normally when your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch crashes, the report it generates is sent to Apple anonymously so that a fix can be worked out for the next iOS update. Those crashes can contain the information on exploits that hackers need to overwrite iOS. The battle that the jailbreak community, specifically the Chronic-Dev Team, is attempting to fight now is for who gets those reports.

The Chronic-Dev Crash Reporter is available for Mac and Windows on the idownloadblog.com Downloads page (most of the way down the page, under Other Tools). The app is free and once launched will search your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch for any crash reports you may have and send them to the Chronic-Dev Team to be analyzed.

Obviously, more reports equals quicker results. So, if you support the work that the jailbreaking community does, this app is a good way to help it (and by extension, you) out.

Do you jailbreak your iOS device? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments!