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Police ID woman with her iPod

Here is an odd story for your Sunday morning. A woman was out jogging in San Francisco when she was struck by a car and left unconscious by the hit-and-run driver. She had no ID on her at the time, but police did take the iPod she was using to a local Apple Store. The employees then used the iPod's "...identifying information" (serial number?) with Apple to ID the owner. All of this begs the question:

Is there nothing this device can't do?!?

Here is an odd story for your Sunday morning. A woman was out jogging in San Francisco when she was struck by a car and left unconscious by...
 

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Brady J. Frey

The woman's in critical condition -- she was a trainee with http://www.active.com/donate/tntgsf/tntgsfEMyers, though I never met her, we sponsor the organization, and they sent out a notice asking if anyone can ID her. Their email said she had 'an orange ipod' -- I called back and told them there was no such thing as an orange iPod, so either check colorwarepc.com for someone who customized it, or look again and make sure that it's not a pink ipod and a bad report. They said they'd look into it, and apparently were already going down to apple by then.

The organization notes to wear reflective gear, run against the flow of traffic, carry ID or have a shoe ID tag, and avoid wearing a headset if jogging.

March 06 2006 at 12:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sean Savage

#9: Due process. That information would not be admissible in court.

March 05 2006 at 11:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tan Hoang

Is the woman alright?

March 05 2006 at 6:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Brendan Sheehan jnr


If she had her own contact info. in the iPod it would have speeded up the process, but still quick thinking on the part of the police, good job!

March 05 2006 at 4:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alan Hartung

Strangely, all I could think of were the privacy issues. Apple just gave the personal information to a police officer. If I were a cop, and I had a suspected criminals iPod, I now know I can just go to an Apple store and say the person was in an accident, and I need to ID her...

I'm glad in this case it helped out, but what's to stop a cop from just lying about it to get private information?

March 05 2006 at 3:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JJA

" Silly, stupid people. Your name can be found under the "About this iPod" page on there, or in the contacts book"

Actually this isn't the case if you named your iPod something other than your name like I have done or have multiple contacts in your address book. I sync my address book to my iPod so I have close to 200 contacts on there. So I guess it wouldn't be that easy just to look that info up on the iPod itself

March 05 2006 at 10:11 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
LD

My Nano szved me on my trip last week. The airline lost my luggage. When I was filling out the paperwork the dude absolutely required me to give a local phone number and address. (my cell phone # wasn't good enough for him I guess). Luckily I sync my contacts and was able to find the info.

March 05 2006 at 9:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
GmanMac

Of course the unanswered question is was struck by the car because she couldn't hear the car coming up on her with the iPod blasting in her ears.

March 05 2006 at 9:15 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Casey

Silly, stupid people. Your name can be found under the "About this iPod" page on there, or in the contacts book.

March 05 2006 at 9:06 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kris

I'm wondering if there are any privacy concerns here. Does Apple routinely turn over customer data to the police without a warrant? Granted, in this case it was helping a person, but will that be the case every time. I haven't read the EULA (who has?), so I'm sure we've all signed our lives away to Apple already, but its still a concern.

March 05 2006 at 8:56 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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