One family, two Find My iPhone adventures
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian family has recently gone through not one, but two adventures related to stolen iPhones. While on holiday at a Hilton in Fiji, the family's mother, Fiona Donohoe, had her iPhone ripped off by a hotel concierge. In a move worthy of a featured spot on Dumb Criminals, the theft was discovered and the iPhone recovered after the concierge accidentally synced all of his/her own contacts with Donohoe's MobileMe account. After that it was presumably simple to track down the thief, who has been fired from the Fiji Hilton and jailed for six months.
Only two weeks later, 13-year-old Tahira Donohoe had her iPhone stolen while at school. She and her father used the Find My iPhone app on his iPad to track the thief's progress along a bus route for a while before deciding to give up the chase and let the police deal with it. They walked into a police station, set the iPad on the counter, and reported a theft in progress.
Police caught up with the thief shortly thereafter, and when they were at first unable to find the stolen goods, they asked the Donohoes to ping the phone using Find My iPhone. Once the telltale sonar sound went off, police recovered the phone, arrested the 13-year-old thief after a brief chase, and brought everything in to the station to sort things out.
The Donohoes did not press charges against the young thief. The Herald reports that the Donohoes had already replaced the iPhone stolen in Fiji before that phone was recovered, so they now have an extra iPhone. Hopefully they can hang on to all of them from now on.
Find My iPhone is available for free from the App Store and does not require a paid MobileMe account if you have an iPhone 4, any iPad, or a fourth-generation iPod touch. Once iCloud launches, the service will presumably be free for all users on all devices. Find My iPhone is hands-down the first app that should be installed on new iOS devices and the first service you should enable.
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According to the Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian family has recently gone through not one, but two adventures related to stolen...
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Fortunately, from screenshots and videos people have posted on the iOS 5 betas, iCloud will ask for your Apple ID upon setup by default, meaning one of the first thing most iPhone users will do is turn this stuff on, including Find My iPhone. You have the option of cancelling it, but it'll be on by default and deeply integrated with the rest of the iCloud experience.
There are several services that do this for Android as well. Regardless of what platform your on, find out if this feature is available and turn it on. It's invaluable. I wish every phone had this on by default.
You want to enable restrictions so the thief can't turn off find my iPhone settings. My friends got stolen and the person turned that off right away.
Still one problem if someone turns off your iPhone or iPad then it doesn't work I wish apple would let the GPS work even if the phone is powered off or to power off the phone it has to be unlocked first means someone would need the password. This gives you more time to find the device before someone can wipe it.
A free MobileMe account should be the first thing set up with the Find My iPhone service enabled in the Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings. The Find My iPhone app, is optional, especially since there is also a web interface.
September 08 2011 at 1:09 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyAgree entirely.
Find My iPhone has saved our phones on two other occasions, both times where the (silenced) phone was on track for disaster. Once in the laundry, once in the garbage. A handholding setup with each new iPhone would go a long way towards saving a lot of regret. At the police station in this story, all the police had iPhones and not one of them knew about Find My iPhone. I was asked over and over about where they could buy the App.
It surprised me. I kinda thought everyone knew about it. Apple usually gets the message out to the non-geeks - it's one of their great strengths.
6 months jail for stealing an iPhone? WTF? The girl here in Australia got let off with a 'stern warning' from police, the poor guy in Fiji loses his job (possibly fair enough) and gets 6 months behind bars.
September 07 2011 at 10:24 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyWhat would you suggest, Dagaz?
The Concierge at the Hotel is employed to look after the property of others. It is a position of trust and responsibility and he is an adult presumably aware of the consequences of stealing stuff he was meant to be protecting. It was his employer, the Hilton Fiji, who took action against him. Not us (it's my wife and daughter's phone s that were stolen).
The 13 year old girl was a troubled youngster who the police handled brilliantly, involving her family. We did not press any charges as the police really felt they had reached her through her family. A warning that changes her youthful tendencies has got to be at least worth trying.
Hi macraptor. Do you think anyone in Australia would get six months jail time for stealing an iPhone? He probably deserved to lose his job, again over here he might not even get punished that severely if it was a one-off offence. That's all I'm saying.
BTW, I'm glad your wife and daughter got their iPhones back.
The "poor guy" in Fiji is a scumbag and got what he deserved. He at least *had* a job, so I have no sympathy for him... it's not like he was going to starve.
September 08 2011 at 8:25 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyIt's too bad it doesn't work very reliably though. My wife and I both had a heck of a time figuring out where our son was this afternoon when his bus was late. Both the app and the web page on me.com erronenously displayed him either far north of his bus route or stationary in a neighborhood nowhere near his route. A few texts and a phone call were necessary to figure out what was going on, but Find My iPhone was a bust for us today.
September 07 2011 at 8:59 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyIt's not the Find My iPhone service that caused you to have those problems, most likely. Phone location services aren't always precise and are prone to errors. If his iPhone could not find a GPS signal, then it would revert to finding the location via cell towers and wireless networks around him - which can cause issues as cell towers can be tens of kilometres away and phones are still able to connect and receive data from those towers (as iPhone's now don't prioritise signal strength, they prioritise signal quality,).
As a 15 year old, if you were my parent, I'd feel very constricted if I were constantly surveilled all the time; it would feel like I'm not trusted, but that's my opinion, I'm sure you have (I would hope) a valid reason for using Find My iPhone instead of contacting him directly first.
Find my iPhone is available from the App Store, but it's only the app to track other phones. You don't install it that way.
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