Hot on the heels of a change in US law which makes it perfectly legal to modify phones to allow the installation of third party software, the infamous iPhone Dev Team has released a web-based hack for the first time.

Living at Jailbreak me.com, the new hack is the first which can be installed without connecting to a PC or Mac, and operates entirely within the iPhone's own Safari browser.

JailbreakMe reportedly works with all iDevices running OS4 or 4.01 but not the latest 4.0.1 beta recently released to developers.

Although the US Copyright Office has called time on Apple's declaration that footling with its phone is illegal, the Cupertino company still insists that jailbreaking your iPhone, iPod or iPad will invalidate its warranty.

We have even heard unsubstantiated rumours that Apple has sneakily installed a bit of code in the latest OS which will report if one of its devices has ever been tampered with, even if a full clean install is carried out.

If you want to free you Apple gadget from the shackles of proprietary software oppression, you can do so at www.jailbreakme.com. But don't say we didn't warn you.

UPDATE:
We are hearing multiple reports that the Jailbreakme hack has some serious issues with Face Time video calls and MMS messages. The team behind the jailbreaking site are aware of the problems and are currently working on a fix.