Man Uses New Tracking Feature To Hunt For Stolen iPhone
On Saturday, Kevin lost his iPhone in a bar in Chicago, and by lost we mean someone grabbed it within seconds of him leaving the bar, but no one had seen a thing when he ran back in to ask about it. Since he had the Find My iPhone service activated on it, and his friend had a Sprint 3G dongle on his laptop, they decided to see whether they could track it down. AT&T and Sprint: working together to fight crime!
We don't want to ruin the suspense by giving away how things unfolded, so read his story for yourself on his livejournal page. We can say, however, that the phone tracking service seems to work pretty well—especially if you can manage to have live access to the web and Google Maps while you're trying to track it down in a strange city.
"Find My iPhone works, and it is awesome." [happywaffle.livejournal.com]
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Comments:
@krispykrink: Yes, that is sad. I hope they factor in his misfortune when they sentence the piece of shit.
Awesome. If I were the thief I would've been pretty freaked out being stalked like that. Hope he doesn't keep thieving!
@HiPwr: If you read the story, they didn't call the cops. They just tracked the guy down and took the phone back.
He shook the guys hand?? He should have gotten arrested. If nothing else he should have called the bar and complained, maybe the thief would have got fired.
I guess there is no shame in being a thief these days!
man, wish I'd known about this feature back when mom's iphone was stolen and she was accused of making 20 calls to Guatemala.
Only downside - you need MobileMe, which Apple charges $100/yr for. You used to be able to get it for $30 on eBay, now it goes for about $60 on eBay. Of course it offers a lot more than the iPhone finding service - over-the-air syncing of contacts, calendar events, etc and 20 GB of storage space "in the cloud" for photos, files or e-mail. But if all you're looking for is the iPhone finder, it's a steep price to pay. Might as well just get insurance for the phone.
@frank64: Bad idea to get the guy who possibly knows your phone number and the number of your friends, as well as your contact list, fired. You have to sleep.
@AllToAll,ByMyMustard!_GitEmSteveDave: I would bank on the possibility that the guy didn't have time to transcribe all of the contact information out of the phone. And if he did, he's got it anyway despite the fact that they took back the phone.
@AllToAll,ByMyMustard!_GitEmSteveDave:
I guess there is no harm in trying then? Doesn't seem to be much cost in stealing. Ya get caught ya give it back, go on your way.
Pretty awesome, even if the comments are full of the typical LJ anonymous idiocy
My two past phones had a locking feature that forced you to enter a code to make any calls or access anything else. Do iPhones have this?
@HiPwr: iPhones do have this, though I have always wondered how much that would dissuade a thief from stealing the phone. Most likely the thief would not discover that the phone was locked until after s/he had squirreled it away, and what then? Will the thief return it, or sell it to someone without letting them know it's locked? Or is there a way to plug it into any computer with iTunes and just reset the phone to factory settings without entering the password? Actually, now that i think about it, I *have* restored my (1st gen) iPhone on my laptop, resulting in my phone no longer being locked. So I'm thinking locking the phone would not be much of a hindrance.
wow that was pretty cool. Kind of reminds me of the about the person who found her camera by using her wifi flash card thing.
Not to "blame the victim," but I wouldn't exactly call the guy who picked up the phone a thief as so many people here seem to be willing to do. There's a certain part of me (mostly my brain) that says someone who's careless enough to leave a $400 phone in a bar deserves to lose it.
Too bad Apple didn't build the iPhone with a Tazer option.
(Remotely Activate iTazer? (Y/N))
@Hate_Brian_Club_I'mNotOnlyThePresidentI'mAClient:
Yes, the guy who picked up the phone is a thief. He took something that was not his - and the owner was easily identifiable. This isn't like finding $10 on the sidewalk.
Thief implies intent to steal or active taking. Finding something is not stealing or thieving.
@boobaloob:
True, it may not be a big deterent to theft, but at least it will prevent the information and contact data on the phone from being accessable to a thief.
@Hate_Brian_Club_I'mNotOnlyThePresidentI'mAClient: No he is a thief, genius. Whether YOU think he "deserved to lose it" is irrelevant, the taking of the iPhone was theft.
How long will it take people to wise to this feature and disable it, work around it or how to react? Not long, I am sure. I bet if this guy lost the phone a few months from now it would never be seen again.
If you read his "tale" he appears to be quite the bigot, too.
@silver-bolt: Taking something that obviously doesn't belong to you without the property owner's consent is theft.
Picking up an expensive phone someone left on a phone isn't "active taking"? So you walk by tables in restaurants and coffee shops mindlessly putting peoples keys and phones in your pockets because they're in the path of your sticky fingers?
How is there no intent? Just because he didn't take it from the victim's person doesn't mean there was no intent. What are you smoking?
@silver-bolt: Are you serious? Dude picks up phone at a restaurant and decides to pocket it instead of giving the owner a call or giving it to the restaurant to hang on to and that is not "active taking".
It's stealing. Plain and simple. Don't drag BS into something so cut and dry.
@Hate_Brian_Club_I'mNotOnlyThePresidentI'mAClient: He is clearly a thief. Instead of responding to one of the requests from the owner or turning the phone over to the restaurant he decided to keep the phone for himself.
That is a thief. Don't try to blur the issue or BS anyone.
@silver-bolt:
Additional corollary: if you don't even bother to call one of the numbers in the person's contact list to make an attempt to get it back to the rightful owner, it is stealing.
@savdavid: I know right! I work in that area occasionally and I have some friends who live right around there. It's definitely a hispanic neighborhood but it's also FULL of white hipster kids looking for cheap rent, and clearly on its way to full blown gentrification (take California a few blocks north and look at the shitty sorta-posh boutiques). White people with laptops don't really stick out that much, but of course scared white people ALWAYS think everyone is noticing them and simultaneously planning something sinister!
It is pretty cool that he tracked his phone down and got the guy who took it to give it back (it could have gone the way of that Peep Show episode with Mark and his stolen phone, hah hah) but dang - it was hard to read.
@TheDayIsMine: Actually, it is. [en.wikipedia.org]
Additionally, so is "calling it" or saying "I saw it first".
Myself and two compadres, Ryan and Mark, are in Chicago (each of us for the first time) to attend Brickworld, the world's largest Lego convention. Yes we're a bunch of dorks. Yes you totally wish you were here too.
Let me respond to those statements, in order:
1. Good for you.
2. Agreed.
3. Not on your life.
@savdavid:
Cell phone theft is usually a crime of opportunity. If you don't send the phone a message, there's no way to know the locator service is activated without going deep into the phone settings.
@silver-bolt:Removing something from a private place of business that you claim to have "found" is theft. It's your duty to attempt to locate the owner, or surrender the item to the property owner or his/her representative.
@silver-bolt: You can't read, can you? The wikipedia article that you cite states that-
"At common law, the finder of a lost item could claim the right to possess the item against any person except the true owner or any previous possessors."
"The underlying policy goals to these distinctions are to (hopefully) see that the property is returned to its true original owner"
"Property is generally deemed to have been mislaid or misplaced if it is found in a place where the true owner likely did intend to set it, but then simply forgot to pick it up again. For example, a wallet found in a shop lying on a counter near a cash register will likely be deemed misplaced rather than lost. Under common law principles, the finder of a misplaced object has a duty to turn it over to the owner of the premises, on the theory that the true owner is likely to return to that location to search for his misplaced item. If the true owner does not return within a reasonable time (which varies considerably depending on the circumstances), the property becomes that of the owner of the premise."
In this case the "premises" being the bar.
Too bad for krispykrink. He could've just read the effen' article.
PS: Cliff Notes version - no, he couldn't have. Sort of defeats the purpose, no?
@HiPwr: The current iPhone not only has pass-codes (yawn) but the above-mentioned Find Me.
Plus, you can nuke your iPhone from afar. Like Zeus' bolt, it'll remotely wipe it in an eyeblink.
Plus hardware encryption.
Plus instantaneous restore (also encrypted) once you refind your iPhone, then sync it to your iTunes.
Can your past two phones do all of all of that?
@Trai_Dep: Forgot: when you tag your lost iPhone as lost, a text banner, with whatever message you like ("Call 555-1212 to return it, and you'll receive a DELICIOUS platter of warm cookies!") across it.
This also blocks its use, of course.
Maybe my obvious genius clouds my vision of the situation - not being a common and everyday moron it escapes me how he's this particular person is a thief. At the worst this person is a dishonest finder. Picking something up that's been left behind does not enter a person into a social contract that requires you make arrangements to return the item.
Has the whole idea of "finders keepers, losers weepers" been lost on a generation used to getting whatever the fuck it wants regardless of its carelessness?
@savdavid: See my above comments. There's an interconnecting set of measures that blocks the finder from simply turning them off.
Sort of misses the point otherwise, no?
@Trai_Dep: Flat out wrong. I have the iPhone 3Gs and MobileMe, thus Find My iPhone. It can be shut off by removing the MobileMe user login/password, or a full system restore on any computer with iTunes installed.
@Hate_Brian_Club_I'mNotOnlyThePresidentI'mAClient: There's no such thing as finder's keepers. Just because you can do something easily thanks to someone's misplacing something and without getting caught does not make it right or legal. There is a duty to at least attempt to find the original owner. In this case, the what he should have done was turn the phone into the restaurant, not take it with him and ignore multiple messages to the phone that the owner wants it back. The fact that you find something someone left lying around does not entitle you to own that item you fucking moron
@WraithSama: See, I wouldn't even give a shit about the thief having access to the contact data on my phone. I would just want my damn phone back.
I've had women threaten to sue when I've looked in lost purses and called telephone numbers to see that the item was returned, so I'm wary of actually *doing* something to try and locate the owner of a lost item.
That said, I'll pick up a phone and dial "Mom" or "Dad" if those are entries.
Too bad for the thief. He could've just turned off the feature.