Lost iPhone - found it using Find My iPhone... police won't help me retrieve it

I-filed said :

Near Duffy Street? That’d be Ainslie Village. Good luck!

Im not sure what the GPS is like in the iphone but in my android its accuracy might put you in the living room instead of the bedroom on the sat map.

matt31221 said :

Why do you want your IPhone back anyways? These devices are made with the blood of Chinese peasants.

Honestly get yourself an Taiwanese made Android phone. Ethical and excellent, does everything better than the freakin Iphone.

This is a wind up surely.

iPhones are manufactured in southern mainland China by Foxconn, a Taiwanese company that also manufactures hardware for Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson.

Two of those companies offer handsets running Android. In fact to quote the Wall Street Journal – “Motorola is a key Foxconn client.”

“Made” is a deceiving word anyway, it’s really assembly. Most of the components in smartphones including iPhone come from South Korea and the US including flash memory, processors, transceiver chips and so on.

matt31221 said :

I would call your service provider and get them to send a kill code to the phone – completely screwing it and making it into a paperweight.

Why do you want your IPhone back anyways? These devices are made with the blood of Chinese peasants.

Honestly get yourself an Taiwanese made Android phone. Ethical and excellent, does everything better than the freakin Iphone.

I would have thought you’d be hard pushed finding any phone, regardless of brand origin, that isn’t made in China.

2.0 said :

Or here’s an idea, dont get so drunk that you lose your phone in the back of a cab.

How’s the view from up there on your high-horse?

I would call your service provider and get them to send a kill code to the phone – completely screwing it and making it into a paperweight.

Why do you want your IPhone back anyways? These devices are made with the blood of Chinese peasants.

Honestly get yourself an Taiwanese made Android phone. Ethical and excellent, does everything better than the freakin Iphone.

Solidarity said :

Find my iPhone also stops working if they pull the SIM card and replace it with thier own….

Pretty much the only logical thing to do is to not turn it on except overseas. Apple and/or the local carriers can block the IMEI, turning it into a iPod touch. I guess the owner has to prove ownership or something. Especially with a broken screen, there isn’t much incentive aside from giving it back, or sell/give it overseas.

That’s logical; not that people are logical.

If it was lost on Saturday, and it’s now Tuesday, maybe the person holding it hasn’t gotten around to contacting the police yet. Maybe the phone has no credit. Who knows.

It is something to know though, what recourse is/isn’t available in Australia/Canberra; the iPhone being very popular in Australia (31.4% of marketshare). I suppose the ideal thing to do would be to go to the address with someone muscular, make the phone ping audibly, and hope for the best. Or maybe send a reward notice, all via Find my iPhone.

Find my iPhone also stops working if they pull the SIM card and replace it with thier own….

urchin said :

you might try the carrot approach vs. the stick. offer a $50 reward. for an iphone with a cracked screen that sounds about right.

You don’t live in Duffy St, Ainslie by any chance, do you? Hahaha!

Or here’s an idea, dont get so drunk that you lose your phone in the back of a cab.

MsCheeky said :

If the phone is password locked, then they can’t read any message that you send. Wipe remotely and kiss it goodbye. You’ve got it synced, don’t you?

The “Find my iPhone” feature means the message is displayed with an annoying sound for 2 minutes. This is not a SMS message, it’s a separate feature of the phone.

MsCheeky said :

If the phone is password locked, then they can’t read any message that you send. Wipe remotely and kiss it goodbye. You’ve got it synced, don’t you?

The Find my iPhone service can display a message on the iPhone whether or not it is password locked.

It also can cause a pinging noise for 2 minutes even if the iPhone is on mute.

It can’t do much if the iPhone is turned off.

you might try the carrot approach vs. the stick. offer a $50 reward. for an iphone with a cracked screen that sounds about right.

If the phone is password locked, then they can’t read any message that you send. Wipe remotely and kiss it goodbye. You’ve got it synced, don’t you?

Dagget66 said :

Might be wise to think about things before going knocking on doors …

Simply asking people if they’ve picked up an iPhone will help find it. You won’t find it if you don’t ask. Just don’t go charging along the street accusing everyone of stealing your phone. Just say your phone is lost, “the GPS says it’s lost in this street, have you seen it?”

Or just do the sensible thing and remote lock+wipe, tell the carrier the phone is stolen, and avoid paying $600 in premium number fees because you were too slow telling the carrier that your phone was missing.

Use Find My iPhone to send a message to the phone stating you have traced it’s location and the person in possession of it is to submit it to Police or the lost and found of the Canberra Centre within 24hrs, texting you to inform you which they’ve chosen. If that is not done, authorities will be informed.

I had a call from Sgt soandso, from ACT policing last night, claiming we had somebody’s lost iPhone at our house in Kambah.
After I reassured him that no , we dont have a rogue iPhone in the house, we had a conversation about the possibility that the phone could in fact be a random distance from where “Find my iPhone” pointed the owner to.
My Galaxy is currently telling me I’m at least 200 metre’s from where I actually am …

Might be wise to think about things before going knocking on doors …

Tooks said :

Even if you were to knock on every door in the street, it’s not like the person in possession of your phone is suddenly going to be honest and hand it back.

And it’s one of the longest streets in Canberra … : (

“Hi there, my iphone is in your house, it has a GPS tracker, can you please return it so i won’t have to call police. If you give it to me now, we will never speak of this again”

just hope they don’t read the riot act.

Even if you were to knock on every door in the street, it’s not like the person in possession of your phone is suddenly going to be honest and hand it back.

Near Duffy Street? That’d be Ainslie Village. Good luck!

Oh, and there’s obviously the idea of heading over to the neighbourhood where your phone was last seen and knocking on doors.

If you’re not going to do that, I’d suggest you cut your losses and proceed with the lock & wipe, cancel SIM, etc.

“Find my iPhone” is designed to help you find devices that have been misplaced, not stolen. You have the address (or something near enough), so you could choose to go over there and ask for your iPhone back.

Alternately, call Apple for any advice they might have specific to recovering iPhones, then remotely lock & wipe the phone, notify your carrier that the phone has been stolen, and see if there is any way your carrier can help you get a new phone before you leave.

Sackcloth and ashes for a year for the loss of your jesusphone.

Send in the Ninjas!

DUB said :

No password protection on the phone? And no insurance?
Good luck getting your phone back.

insured and password locked… would have been handy to take that phone with me when I leave the country on Sunday and not worry about getting a new one. The strange thing is I can’t see how valuable it would be given it’s got a cracked screen.

orangegirl said :

Why won’t the police help? I find that really strange.

the won’t help because supposedly they need more information than an address gleaned through a GPS trace. Supposedly they’ve had bad press investigating people where no phone turns up (or in the case they told me – the phone was in the complainant’s car still, and he had accused his neighbour).

You can send the phone messages using “find my iphone” so send them a message saying please return my phone for a small reward. if not you can remotely wipe the phone using that service too.

Or just get some of your biggest friends together and go to the house on Duffy Street and demand it back.

I’ve heard reports of police in the US using “Find my iPhone” to track down stolen cars etc.

As anyone here who has had something stolen knows, police in Canberra have little to no interest in finding your stolen items.

Why won’t the police help? I find that really strange.

No password protection on the phone? And no insurance?
Good luck getting your phone back.

update – looks like it’s been turned back off… I suspect whoever has it is not going to return it or atleast attempt to contact me for its return. Oh well.