My wife’s iPhone 12 was stolen last week. We think a pickpocket. Warwickshire Police were great. Tracked my wife’s progress on the town’s CCTV, noted the incident but the cameras were pointing the wrong way to get an ID. Crimed, logged and followed up with a phone call. Very professional.
Fascinating to note the progress of the locked phone since. Briefly appeared on a street in Wolverhampton (about 50 miles away) that evening, next appeared (briefly) at a specific address in the East End of London 48 hours later. The address comes back, not surprisingly, to a mobile phone shop and supplier of spare parts.
This morning a specific address in Dubai in the UAE. We presume it must be held in a Faraday bag between transfers. Seems a lot of trouble for an item worth only spares. We wait with interest its next location.
Sorry to hear of that Dave. You might wonder it’s worth all that hassle for them, I guess it is an indication of the sheer volume of stolen electronic goods that are moving around the planet.
I had my iPhone ‘found’ a good few years ago back at the start of Find My and most people were unaware of it. We had stopped at a traffic accident, I got out to see if I could help (it’s a rural area, services are rare), my phone must have slipped out of a pocket when I got out but I noticed it was gone a mile away, drove straight back and saw a truck pull away from the blocked road area. I loaded up Find My on my wife’s phone and saw my phone heading in the same direction and we started to follow it. (Now we know this is not recommended in certain countries but okay given where I live in rural Ireland so please…). A winding route ensued and the truck ended up pulling up at a depot for deliveries, we pulled up behind and the team on the truck denied any knowledge of it. So my wife called it, a loud ringing from a jacket hanging in the back of the truck. “Oh that thing, yes, found that on the road, didn’t know you were looking for… that thing, is that a phone?”
In defence of the police (I used to work for them) it’s all about evidence. All they have is a brief location point. Could have been in someone’s pocket and they happened to, coincidentally, pop into this shop for a few minutes etc etc at 2215 hours on a Saturday night (according to Find My). What is logged is the intel so a picture can be built up (or is being built up for all I know) that may help the case for a search warrant in the future if others log the same location. As for the Dubai address there’s no Google street view of the location. It’s 16 Street 3/1 Dubai if anyone’s passing.
My Airpods slipped out of my back pocket (first time in 4 years) into an airplane seat Friday night. I didn’t realize it until Find My told me they were not with me. But I was at the curb getting into a car and outside of security. So crap. I put them into lost mode with the option to “Please call this number.”
Over the next 3 days I watched them fly all over the eastern half of the US. DFW, CLT, MYR, LGA, JFK, etc… A few of them more than once. In BOS they apparently were found and seem to be sitting in the lost and found for 2 ½ days. I assume they fell into the cushion and were not discovered until a deep vacuuming or cleaning. I filed a “lost item report” with the airline the first night. But now how to get someone near them with an iPhone to open the case so they’ll get the message to call me?
I have a back channel to this airline and we’re trying to get a phone number for that desk.
On a related note, any idea how long the case battery will last if the case is closed?
The attempted scam has now started via a text message (sic);
‘ Apple Pay
Your iPhone 13 is trying to pay with Apple Pay in China to ensure the safety of your accounts. Please use “Find My” APP to remove your Apple ID and cancel your payment method as soon as possible. This will unbind your apple id from another device.
Apple Support’
Sounds just like Apple doesn’t it? From ‘Apple pay.iuw@icloud.com.
Latest messages. So convincing (sic)
‘Iv’e bought an iPhone 13 I’m using, it have your messages, emails, cards, bank, notes and personal information on it even your SIM # that you transferred, I get your calls. It was not erased. Did you made an insurance claim?
The erase request you made didn’t work, it was connected on wifi in china then got jailbreak and still saying pending it wont erase remotely.
I’m telling you this because the phone is going be auctioned on the black market with your personal information and everything about you that you had on it. all your info including your phone number, address, everything will be cloned.
That’s why I’m telling you to so you can REMOVE IT from your device list and I will factory reset it manually and remove the number.
To remove it, Open the “Find My” App. its on your home screen,
Then go to devices,
Click the old device and hit
“REMOVE THIS DEVICE”.
at the bottom.‘
Then
‘Your old phone is recycled by us, we are just recycling merchants, we are not the ones who steal your phone, if you don’t remove it, your old phone motherboard will be sold to other customers, maybe they will hack your phone or steal your credit card, or contact your family, so we recommend you remove it as soon as possible so we can restore the factory Settings and erase all data.’
Followed by
‘ We partner with AT&T, T-MOBILE, Verizon, Amazon and others for used phones and mobile phone accessories. We don’t steal your personal information, but our customers come from all over the world and they buy these used mobile phone motherboards from our company. We therefore recommend that you open the find my APP and delete it as soon as possible so that we can restore the factory Settings and delete your personal data. If you do not delete, our company will not bear any loss caused to you. Hope you can understand! Thank you very much!’
So all clear and totally plausible then.